Trillanes probe asked
to open safehouses, secret detention places
Press Release
By KARAPATAN
June 19, 2007
QUEZON CITY,
Philippines – The Philippine human rights alliance KARAPATAN
welcomed the planned probe on extrajudicial killings of former soldier
and now senator-elect Antonio Trillanes.
KARAPATAN Secretary
General Marie Hilao-Enriquez said, “We laud Senator Trillanes for this
move to put the Arroyo administration to task for the unabated
extrajudicial killings.”
KARAPATAN likewise
welcomes the pronouncements made by top anti-Arroyo military officials
who said that they will provide the detained senator-elect with
evidence once he begins work in the Senate next month.
KARAPATAN asked for
the Trillanes probe to open safehouses, military camps and pinpoint
secret places of detention to determine the fate of victims of
enforced disappearances. “This will bring an end to the sufferings of
relatives of hundreds of victims who continue to go through the pain
of loss and uncertainty over the fate of their loved ones,” Hilao-Enriquez
added.
“We hope that the
investigation would bring more uniformed men and women who are
in-the-know out of the woodwork to really bring the perpetrators to
the bar of justice and ascertain the fate of those who were abducted
and are missing up to now,” Hilao-Enriquez said.
The human rights group
lambasted the Arroyo government for coddling the general referred to
by the two military officers to be responsible for the physical
elimination of activists. “What Trillanes and the unnamed generals
refer to as ‘mission orders’ and death squads from the military
intelligence is consistent with the Arroyo government’s enhanced
national internal security plan,” Hilao-Enriquez said.
As early as 2005,
KARAPATAN has attributed extrajudicial killings and enforced
disappearances to a national policy of the Arroyo government, Oplan
Bantay Laya I and II, which they say “consider civilians to be fair
target on allegations of being communist sympathizers.” In March 2007,
UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary
Executions Prof. Philip Alston said that one of the causes of the
killings is the “vilification, labelling or guilt by association... of
a wide range of groups – including human rights advocates, indigenous
organizations, religious groups, student groups, agrarian reform
advocates, and others” to be classified as ‘fronts’ and then as
‘enemies of the state’ that are accordingly considered to be
legitimate targets.”
Since Ms. Arroyo
assumed presidency in 2001, KARAPATAN recorded 863 civilian victims of
extrajudicial killings by suspected state security forces, among them
411 activists belonging to different political organizations. 180
persons have been victims of enforced disappearance. Many more have
been abducted and were missing for days before surfacing dead or
incarcerated.