I-TEAM REPORT‘Political killings not official but an unintended policy’ By Nikko DizonPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 01:34:00 05/09/2008

(First of a series)

MANILA, Philippines—Guns with silencers are not usually issued to soldiers. So when a Scout Ranger officer got one, he knew what it was for.

“The procurement of this kind of firearms is just for special ops,” he says of clandestine operations that critics of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration claim to have resulted in hundreds of extrajudicial executions.

The officer, who requested anonymity for obvious reasons, says his unit received the guns three years ago, along with an “order of battle” listing the names of state enemies for “neutralization.”

“We didn’t like the idea, and the implied mission,” he says.

Gen. Hermogenes Esperon was Army commander then. Esperon went on to become chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Due to retire in February, Esperon was extended in his post for three months, to end on May 9.

Ms Arroyo said Esperon’s leadership was needed to pursue the campaign against the communist insurgency, which she wants wiped out by the end of her term in 2010.

A ranking security official says political killings are resorted to in the campaign against the 39-year insurgency but adds this is “not official policy.”

“It is personality-based,” he says, meaning an individual initiative.

‘Can-do guy’

Esperon, a father of seven, is not the type of officer who would order assassinations, says a retired general who had worked with him. “He is a can-do guy and that is a valuable asset. You can depend on him ... He won’t just glide along.”

Adds Clarita Carlos, former head of the National Defense College: “He’s a decent man.”

If anything, says a military analyst, extrajudicial killings and abductions became an “unintended policy” after Ms Arroyo praised now-retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan’s efforts against “rebel terrorists” in her State of the Nation Address in 2006.

Ms Arroyo also praised Palparan’s senior officer, Lt. Gen. Romeo Tolentino, then chief of the Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), who was eventually promoted to Army chief before he retired last year.

Speculation is rife that Esperon, 56, who has played a key role in quashing several coup plots, would either become defense or interior secretary.

Most number of killings

The human rights group Karapatan lists 882 extrajudicial killings since Ms Arroyo became President. The figure includes combat casualties and “collateral damage.” The Philippine Daily Inquirer count is 301; the Philippine National Police, 122.

Karapatan blames the military for the slayings. A commission headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo says communist guerrillas were responsible for some of the killings, a fact acknowledged by a UN human rights investigator.

Karapatan’s list shows the highest number of executions was recorded during the term of Gen. Generoso Senga as AFP chief of staff with 219, followed by 149 during Esperon’s term.

Esperon was named Army chief in August 2005, the same month Senga took over the 120,000-strong AFP. Esperon replaced Senga a year later.

Command responsibility

Whatever Esperon has done for the AFP has been overshadowed by allegations of his involvement in the alleged May 2004 electoral fraud that supposedly benefited Ms Arroyo, and the country’s dismal human rights record.

None of the military sources, both retired and still in active service whom the Inquirer spoke to, directly linked Esperon to the extrajudicial killings.

They also could not say categorically that the rise in political killings was a result of Ms Arroyo’s order to the military to “crush” the insurgency. But two of the Inquirer sources say that Esperon remains culpable by virtue of command responsibility.

The military has claimed whittling down the strength of the New People’s Army to 5,700 from a peak of over 25,000 during the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, but concern in the Philippines and abroad has centered on the surge in extrajudicial executions during the Arroyo presidency.

Human rights violators

Palparan, then commander of the 7th Infantry Division that covered Central Luzon, had been accused of being a human rights violator by militant organizations, which alleged that there were deaths among them wherever Palparan was assigned.

The Inquirer sources, most of whom were from the Army, consistently mentioned the names of Palparan and Tolentino in connection with the killings of suspected communist insurgents and sympathizers.

At the time Tolentino and Palparan were linked to the killings, Esperon was their Army chief and, later, AFP chief of staff.

Tolentino and Palparan have denied the accusations against them.

Minds made of gunpowder

“Utak pulbura” was how the Inquirer sources described Tolentino and Palparan—minds made up of gunpowder.

One Army Scout Ranger says that as a lieutenant fresh out of the Philippine Military Academy, he was assigned to Sulu under Tolentino.

“I was ordered to raid what was supposed to be a rebel lair, which turned out to be just a community,” he says. When he reported that only families with kids were in the area, the general supposedly told him: “Don’t you know that those children will grow up to be rebels too?”

The incident, he says, left him nearly disillusioned with the military institution he was trained to love, admire and defend.

“Haven’t you noticed that after they retired, the incidences of extrajudicial killings went down?” another Army junior officer says.

Bragging about anti-Reds tactics

An Army general claimed Tolentino had openly talked about the methods he used to “neutralize” suspected insurgents. “He bragged about it like it was the most heroic thing.” He said Tolentino even showed him a gun with a silencer.

He also said that three years ago, when Tolentino was the Nolcom chief, a command conference was called where “neutralizing” communist insurgents was openly discussed.

One participant, he said, was so aghast he called then AFP Chief of Staff Senga to ask if it was now policy to assassinate enemies.

Tolentino, now an undersecretary in the National Security Council, dismisses all these claims. Asked if there was any basis for the accusations against him and Palparan, he says: “Maybe it’s because we’re good-looking.”

Tolentino, Palparan style

One Army major says he participated in several encounters with the NPA in the north, killing quite a number of them. He narrated how one time he actually saw an NPA squad leader fall from the bullets of an M-16 he had fired.

“I had no guilt feelings because ... he would have killed my men. But I do feel sorry for him, and his family, because he chose that path,” he says.

“We shouldn’t be like this,” he adds. “We shouldn’t be killing each other.”

This is why, the major says, he will never adhere to the “style of Tolentino and Palparan.”

Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro, AFP spokesperson, says it has never been the policy of the military to resort to extrajudicial killings or enforced disappearances.

The allegations against Tolentino and Palparan, Bacarro says, have not been proven in court.

AFP ‘point man’

Col. Benedicto Jose, chief of the AFP Human Rights Office, says he has been helping other agencies prosecute erring soldiers.

His office serves as the “point man,” coordinating with offices and complainants, monitoring the courts-martial and civilian court cases of military personnel, and even helping locate soldiers accused of human rights violations.

The Judge Advocate General’s Office (JAGO) investigates complaints and files charges if there is sufficient evidence. JAGO lists 14 cases of extrajudicial killings filed against the military, including two under court-martial.

“There’s no perfect organization. Out of the 120,000 officers and men of the AFP, there are a few who would make mistakes. We’re a human organization. We are not faultless,” Jose says.

“But the AFP does not condone human rights violations,” he says, adding the AFP has “adequate human rights training” for its personnel.

The military also conducts neuro-psychiatric evaluation of soldiers every three years to make sure they are mentally fit, says Jose.

To please Arroyo

One active general says military officers resort to political executions because the government is apparently tolerating it. “It’s a good accomplishment for them,” he says of his colleagues.

“Apparently, these people are acting on the basis of how to please her,” the general says, referring to Ms Arroyo.

Both the active and retired generals whom the Inquirer spoke to said that all one had to do was to take note of the President’s “body language.”

The Scout Ranger officer who said he got a gun with a silencer says men in uniform are trained to follow orders. The military “discourages” political and social awareness, making it easy for some to kill an enemy, he says.

A lot of soldiers in the field, he says, do not understand the decades-old war.

AFP losing propaganda war

Leftist groups appear to be doing better in the propaganda war, says an Army colonel, who points to what he calls Karapatan’s “bloated” figures.

An Air Force colonel believes the AFP has contributed a lot in terms of development in the countryside.

Unfortunately, he notes, the military is just not able to get effectively its message of peace across to the people.

A Marine colonel says the fight against the communist insurgency has, for a long time, become a “body count system” in the military.

‘It’s not a body count’

“That was a mistake that was carried on from the Marcos era. There was pressure on the military. Insurgency is not a body count,” says this colonel.

Many in the AFP believe the military will not be able to “crush” the communist insurgency by 2010.

“There should be social justice first,” the Marine colonel says. “Go after the governors, the mayors, the government who steal from these people, and you won’t have any NPAs anymore.”