PHILIPPINES

Human Rights Developments

Disappearances and summary executions continued to be reported, although at a lower level than in previous years. Members of the paramilitary force, CAFGU (Citizens' Armed Forces-Geographical Unit) continued to be among the perpetrators. The death penalty was reimposed in August after being abolished by the 1986 constitution. The government of President Fidel V. Ramos continued to review cases of detained and convicted political prisoners, and many were amnestied. The remaining number of political prisoners, most held under criminal charges, was a source of dispute between the government and human rights groups. Little progress was made in peace talks between the National Democratic Front (the front organization of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People's Army) and the government; talks began in October in Jakarta between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). The MNLF was blamed for several kidnappings and bombings during the year, including the bombing of Manila's Light Rail Transit line on May 11 which injured twenty-six people.

The National Unification Commission (NUC), the government's peace negotiating body, ended its term on July 31 after eleven months of talks between the National Democratic Front and the government. President Ramos named Justice Secretary Franklin Drilon as acting presidential adviser on the peace process in preparation for the creation of a National Amnesty Commission. In its final report, the NUC recommended an absolute and unconditional amnesty for all rebels. The Clinton administration urged Ramos not to include in any future amnesty the men convicted of killing a U.S. army officer, Col. James Rowe, in Manila in 1989.

CAFGU members continued to be responsible for grave human rights abuses, including extrajudicial executions. On February 23, human rights worker and tribal activist Chris Batan, twenty-six-years-old, was shot and killed in barangay (district) Betwagan, Sadanga, Mountain Province. A member of the Igorot tribe, Batan had worked with Task Force Detainees and the Cordillera People's Alliance. His killing was witnessed by two colleagues who said they were approached by five or six armed men. A CAFGU member named Agustin Afawan was arrested and pleaded not guilty in May. On July 17, another tribal activist, William Rom, head of Research and Documentation for SILDAP-Sidlakan, a tribal group based in Butuan City, Mindanao, was killed by CAFGU after returning from a visit to the Mamanwa tribal community. Rom and a companion, Carolina Salas, were followed and then attacked with machetes by four men identified as CAFGU recruits. Salas, who sustained a facial cut, said the attackers accused them of belonging to the New People's Army (NPA). One of the attackers,Mario Muyon, turned himself in to the police of Gigaquit, Surigao del Norte.

Many other instances of CAFGU harassment of suspected NPA supporters were reported during the year. On September 3, for example, a doctor named Hendry Plaza, the first doctor to join the Department of Health's "Doctors to the Barrios" program, was harassed by CAFGU members as he was immunizing children in San Luis, Agusan del Sur. In October, the military acknowledged that Plaza was on the military's wanted list or "order of battle," suspected of links to the NPA when he was a medical student in 1988. Later that month, President Ramos's Secretary of Health ordered Plaza transferred out of the province, saying, "We don't need dead heroes."

CAFGU members were also suspected in the killing of Exquito Lasquite, thirty-three, the local coordinator of the National Federation of Sugar Workers in Hacienda Culminares, barangay Minnoyan, Marcia, Negros Occidental. He died of multiple gunshot wounds to the head on April 17. According to local human rights workers, CAFGU members had frequently come to Lasquite's house to question him about his activities and his relation to the NPA.

The Human Rights Committee of the Philippines House of Representatives said in April that there had been an increase in reported incidents of forced recruitment by CAFGU.

Journalists also came under attack during the year. In January, a journalist named Romeo Legaspi was abducted by men believed to be members of the Philippines National Police after he published an article in the newspaper Voice of Zambales criticizing the police. His family also received death threats. As of December, he was still missing. On June 14, Clovis Nazareno, thirty-three, a newspaper columnist, was attacked by a local businessman in barangay Loon, Bohol province, in the presence of the municipal police chief. He suffered serious injuries, including a broken shoulder blade, but the police chief arrested Nazareno instead of his attacker. Charges were later dropped. Nazareno had written articles critical of illegal logging and had been accused in 1991 of supporting the NPA. One June 22, he filed charges against the businessman and police chief, but the case was dismissed when witnesses refused to testify, fearing reprisals.

July 31 was the deadline for filing claims with a U.S. federal court in Honolulu against the estate of Ferdinand Marcos for human rights abuses suffered during Marcos's years in power. As of July 12, only 2,000 people had filed, out of an estimated 10,000 victims. Spurred by the damage claims, a Manila newspaper, the Philippines Daily Inquirer, released a list of the top twenty military officers implicated in cases of torture under Marcos. Some of those named were still on active duty.

On August 6, a well-known political prisoner, Jaime Tadeo, chairman of the left-wing peasants' organization, Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas or KMP, was released from Bilibid Prison in Manila. He had been jailed in May 1990 on a charge of embezzlement, but he accused the government at the time of imprisoning him to stop his efforts on behalf of peasant rights. In October, the KMP split into two factions, after efforts to remove Tadeo from office failed.

On August 12, the Philippines Senate passed a bill reimposing the death penalty for six "heinous" crimes: murder, rape, arson resulting in death, kidnapping or serious illegal detention, graft and corruption, and drug trafficking.

Asia Watch documented numerous instances of threats, beatings and occasional murder of people trying to document illegal logging or who lived in areas where such logging was taking place.

The Right to Monitor

Human rights monitoring was still a hazardous profession in the Philippines as indicated by the deaths of Chris Batan and William Rom, noted above. On October 11, two other human rights activists, Neil Ballesteros and his wife, Maria Socorro, were abducted from a supermarket in the Manila suburb of Quezon City by six men who identified themselves as police, forces into a van and taken to a barracks where they were interrogated for about three hours. Ballesteros's interrogators demanded that he become an informer for the military in exchange for his wife's life. He was asked specifically to inform on the leader of a faction of the Communist Party, Filemon Lagman. Ballesteros agreed in order to secure the release of himself and his wife; they later appealed to President Ramos for protection. Ballesteros was an organizer for an urban poor organization, Kongreso ng Pagkakios ng Maralitang Lungsod or KPML; his wife worked on human rights education for Amnesty International.

U.S. Policy

Although the Clinton administration was generally supportive of President Ramos, U.S. aid to the Philippines fell sharply in 1993 and promised to continue to decline in 1994. The U.S. requested $2,000,000 in funding for officer training (IMET) for fiscal year 1994, a decrease of $300,000 from the previous year; $10,000,000 in Economic Support funds, down from $25,000,000 in 1993. The request for Foreign Military Funding (FMF) dropped by $7.3 million to a total of $7.7 million for fiscal year 1994. In its funding request for Security Assistance for fiscal year 1994, the Clinton administration stated that U.S. assistance was "essential to the ability of the Ramos government to counter the communist insurgency, improve respect for human rights, consolidate democratic processes and institutions, and to sustain economic reforms."

According to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Funding Recommendation for 1994, during fiscal year 1993 the U.S. contributed $157 million in total aid to the Philippines. It noted that although this was the largest amount of U.S. aid provided to any Asian country, the amount was less than half that provided to the Philippines in 1991. The dramatic decline of U.S. aid to the Philippines followed the Philippines Senate's rejection of a new base treaty in September 1991-a policy the U.S. Senate's appropriations bill for 1993 characterized as "punitive rather than productively serving any clear long term purpose."

That bill recommended $40 million for the Multilateral Assistance Initiative for the Philippines for fiscal year 1993 (half therequested amount) and required that the President channel at least $25 million of those funds through private voluntary organizations and cooperatives.

The Work of Asia Watch

In January, Asia Watch held talks with human rights organizations in Manila.

In September, Asia Watch sent a mission to the Philippines to investigate the relationship between human rights and illegal logging activities.

Asia Watch invited Cecilia Jimenez, Secretary General of PAHRA (Philippine Alliance of Human Rights Advocates), to be honored in December by Human Rights Watch.