Editorial on the Special Rapporteur’s report on the Philippines in the Sun Star - Cagayan de Oro

The Sun Star (Cagayan de Oro) ran an editorial titled “That UN report” (3 December 2007):

While every other media outlet here in Cagayan de Oro and other parts of the country voiced their denunciation of the seeming martial law treatment of media practitioners who covered the Manila Peninsula siege, the military still had to live down the United Nations (UN) report about the alleged human rights violations they committed.

These include the very serious charge that they are allegedly responsible for the summary killings of activists and critics of the administration.

Some of the military officials even said the report only covered only a few days of interviews with noticeably biased militant leftist groups like Karapatan which is known to hit every administration since its inception and didn’t cover other facets like the “Operation Ahos” that claimed the lives of thousands of suspected double agents of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) and continues to this day.

Even the head of a commission tasked to investigate the killings, a bishop in Butuan City disagreed calling it a half-baked report that didn’t delve deeper into the nature and extent of the country’s insurgency problem and the possibility that the communists themselves use ruthless methods of execution on people they suspect of committing “crimes against the people” as if they are judge, jury and executioner all in one.

In response, these militant leftist groups which are suspected and rightly so by the military as legal fronts of the Communist New People’s Army-National Democratic Front-New People’s Army (CPP-NDF-NPA) retort that what’s at issue here is not them nor the communist rebels but the abuse allegedly committed by the military and then proceed with their propaganda of how this country had gone to the dogs and that a new so-called “democracy’ is needed ad nauseaum.

Yet because of the title and position the UN-Alston report will be given much credence and will be used as yet additional propaganda fodder by the communist rebels and their fronts to advance their cause.

And their cause behind all those motherhood statements and sheer propaganda bombast is the desire to replace this country’s version with their own twisted, perverted version of democracy like those practiced in North Korea and China of old.

While not discounting the charges listed in the report, one also needs to examine what these rebels and their allies are doing this for aside from demanding for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s resignation.

The Arroyo administration’s credibility is certainly suspect at the least but so are the motives of these so-called “progressive groups.”

Hence their labels and their constant, subtle and covert attempts to ride every other issue critical of the administration. And the people should be wary of their designs and not accept their propaganda bombast hook, line and sinker.