In his speech before members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” C. Aquino stressed civilian supremacy over the military and the need for respect for the chain of command.
Aquino however was silent on the issue of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations that marked the records of the previous Commander-in-Chief and her counterinsurgency program that not only failed to crush the Communist Party of the Philippines but left behind a long trail of blood.
Aquino addresses military generals and soldiers at Camp Aguinaldo. (Photo credit: Marcelino Pascua/OPS/NIB-Photo)
Operation Plan Bantay Laya, the counterinsurgency program of former President Arroyo, was said to have targeted members of the New People’s Army but also their alleged sympathizers — the members of the so-called “communist fronts”. The result: More than 1,000 activists were recorded as victims of extrajudicial killings by suspected soldiers. The most sensational cases were those that occurred in areas where then-President Arroyo authorized the deployment of Jovito Palparan.
Aquino thus missed the chance to give the AFP a categorical order to veer away from the Arroyo policy and program. He could have declared it before generals and soldiers that the new Commander-in-Chief does not countenance the murder of unarmed, innocent civilians who happen to be activists in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations against the CPP-led New People’s Army.
For nine years, Arroyo and the AFP tried their worst to crush the CPP and the NPA through military operations, physical attacks against activists (based on the dangerously false premise that they are NPAs without guns) and legal assaults on activist leaders (trumped-up cases against the likes of Representative Satur Ocampo, et al) but they did not make a dent in the communist insurgency. With the egging of shady characters like Norberto Gonzales, Arroyo stopped the peace talks with the CPP’s political wing, the National Democratic Front, and instead campaigned to declare the CPP a terrorist group.
Twas like the Marcos dictatorship all over again but with a twist: There was a veneer of “democracy” and “democratic processes” to cover it all up. The civilian authorities unleashed the military against both the public agitated by official corruption and economic hardships (among others) and the armed “enemies of the state”. That was the Arroyo way.
The United Nations special rapporteur, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and local groups Karapatan and Hustisya are all urging the new Aquino administration to stop the mad Arroyo way, and herald a time of respect for human rights and international humanitarian law which seeks to “humanize” wars, and announce the resumption of the peace process to peacefully yet resolutely address the roots of the armed conflict.
The question now which many would like Aquino to answer and tell the military is this: Would the new Aquino administration continue treading the Arroyo way?
Sadly, he missed the chance in his speech before the military.
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[...] and killings committed in the conduct of “counter-insurgency” operations, something he failed to do during his address to the Armed Forces of the Philippines [...]