philippines
12 Sep 2008
How we're Helping the Philippines in its Dirty War
As the Philippine Government kills and displaces its Muslim population on Mindanao, Peter Sales looks at how Australia is making the situation worse
When Georgia and Russia went to war briefly last month, there was initial outrage that anyone would try to use the Olympics as a diversion while they attacked and killed thousands of civilians.Meanwhile, just to our north, and without attracting much attention, the Government of the Philippines was carrying out its own dirty war as usual against the bangsamoro people on the southern island of Mindanao.
With few exceptions, the international media has ignored all that the government of that benighted archipelago has chosen to do to its own people - including the return to all-out war against its Muslim population. Last year the Australian legal scholar and United Nations Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Killings, Professor Philip Alston, visited the Philippines and condemned the human rights situation there.
He was immediately showered with abuse and the Arroyo regime later sought to have him removed from his UN post. Alston concluded that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) perpetrates major human rights abuses through a counter-insurgency program underwritten and supervised by the United States.
A bloody separatist struggle in the southern Philippines has continued intermittently for centuries. Over recent years the contest has been led by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which was negotiating a peace settlement with Manila.
The prevailing view in the international press is that the maligned Moros have gone on the warpath again. In this, the wire services choose to rely upon official press releases of the Manila regime. Another favorite ploy is to discredit the Moro cause by linking it to kidnap-for-ransom gangs like the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG). No matter that the ASG was originally set up by the CIA in Afghanistan; now they are terrorists identified with the MILF. There is strong evidence, too, that military agents are behind many of the bombings that have been blamed on the separatists.
Negotiations concerned with ancestral domain - a concept which translates fairly accurately as native title - were underway and a Memorandum of Agreement was due to be signed early in August. Then the Supreme Court of the Philippines - frequently the upholder of elite interests - issued a restraining order and the talks collapsed. The 102nd and 105th Base Commands of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Force (BIAF) immediately occupied a number of communities in central Mindanao and intermittent fighting broke out between Government forces and separatist rebels.
During these manoeuvres, Manila refused to admit that the AFP had already sent its own ruthless vigilantes - the Civilian Armed Forces Geographic Units (CAFGU) and other paramilitaries - into these areas to provoke maximum terror. President Gloria Arroyo, who many Filippinos believe is the most corrupt president in the country's history, desperately needs the support of the political elite in Mindanao. In relying on patronage and such cronyism, she creates a grave crisis of legitimacy. Of further concern, Manila has linked peace in the south to a new federal form of government which would allow Arroyo to retain power after her term of office expires in 2010.
Since fighting erupted again in central Mindanao in early August, at least a quarter of a million people have been forced from their homes. These evacuees remain in peril, exposed to war and weather as donations of aid go missing. The army has run amok in their abandoned villages, burning homes, killing livestock, and stealing meagre household items. Farmers who sneak back to tend their crops are killed. The relief centres are ill-equipped and disease is rampant. Many people have been dispossessed several times in recent years and an entire generation of children is receiving almost no education at all. This disgraceful situation is unfolding on our back doorstep - and with the active connivance of Western powers.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has drawn attention to the current humanitarian crisis, but the Philippine Social Welfare Secretary, Esperanza Cabral, declared that evacuees were "used to conflict". She continued, "They already know if there's an exchange of gunfire they should leave their homes; then if the shooting ends, they go back to their homes. That's a way of life in Mindanao." Maybe, but shocked aid workers have responded that evacuation is still traumatic and poses risks to life, limb, property and sanity.
Whatever is happening in Mindanao, it has little to do with the sanitised broadcast version. The dissembling by powerbrokers, the severity with which critics are silenced, and the circumstances in which local journalists have to work are at once terrifying and dispiriting.
And Australia's record in Mindanao is appalling.
At the end of 2006, then Defence Minister Robert Hill was in Zamboanga offering financial support to the Barangay Intelligence Network, which contains cultists like the Bagong Ilaga (New Rats), described by the Asian Human Rights Commission as "an insidious disease".
Former Australian ambassador Tony Hely toured the archipelago as an apologist for Australian mining companies and other enterprises responsible for immense environmental damage. Rod Smith, our new man in Manila, was last month in the southern Philippines, talking with Douglas Cagas, governor of Davao del Sur. Not so long ago Cagas was an architect of the dreaded counter-insurgency program that pioneered ritual murder, cannibalism, and a host of other horrors by groups calling themselves Tad Tad (Chop Chop) and Kill a Kommie for Krist (KKK). The Australian embassy is apparently hoping to use Cagas as an agent in promoting our exports and expertise in Mindanao.
Both Smith and US Ambassador Kristie Kenney have urged that the AFP be given free rein to restore order and stability in Mindanao. Presumably neither diplomat has bothered to read Professor Alston's report, because to have read it and still support the role of the AFP in Mindanao is to condone the atrocities they are committing.
Why have consecutive Australian governments supported the Philippine tyranny through its various incarnations? Why do we provide assistance to the ruthless, coup-prone AFP and bring scores of their officers to Australia for training? Even the so-called Berdugo sa Mindoro (Butcher of Mindoro), the former Major-General Jovito Palparan - who Alston identified as being involved in dozens of murders and massacres - was invited to Queensland's Canungra training camp. Australian taxpayers' money goes towards financing a reprehensible military machine which Australian companies such as Sagittarius Mines, Oceana Gold, and others employ to protect their own rapacious concerns throughout Mindanao.
Australia has played a terrible part in prolonging the misery of thousands of impoverished families forced from their lands under a hail of artillery and aerial bombardment and murdered by death squads to make the area more pliable for foreign interests.
The world was right to condemn the cynical attempts of Russia and Georgia to use the Olympics as a cover for their military actions.
But it's an even greater shame that those behind the human rights violations against the bangsamoro people don't even feel the need to cover their activities with a diversion, since organisations such as the Australian Government refuse to notice anyway.
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Mindanao has been a basket case for the last 50 years. Certainly before the current scribe, Peter Sales, was born.
It is a sad fact that where you get a Catholic religion cemented on to the existing religion of the indigenous peoples, together with any part of the world in which America has interfered. And the result, is bound to be a terminal basket case. I do take exception to Australians being blamed for everything. ‘We are the fattest people on earth, we have decimated more native flora and fauna than anyone else on earth, we are, per capita, the greatest polluters on earth, the most conservative nation on earth, the country most likely to jump when the bloody Americans tell us to, on earth. Our mining companies are the most rapacious on earth. We are the meanest-most generous-take your pick, country on earth.’ And so the tiresome parading of our faults continues. How are we meant to be aware of each atrocity that happens on earth? Zimbawe, isn’t that our fault too? The latest floods in Bangladesh? Sorry, but they were the people who are breeding themselves to extinction (which is what Australians are presently doing) and in the process they have clear felled every last living tree which held together the subsoil of Bangladesh. I refuse to pity those people who leave every last problem to god, God, Allah, and so on. As a matter of fact. Wasn’t it the Christian God who said God helps those who help themselves? Pardon me if I cannot find it in my heart to be willing to take the blame for the atrocities that happen in Mindinao. Perhaps I nodded off for an hour, and missed the scenario. Sorry Peter, take you sad story and stick it up where the sun don’t shine.
Whew!! Now there is a rabid Howard supporter for you. Case of very dirty pot calling the kettle black!
Australian Governments of whatever ilk do whatever the Bush Imperial Regime commands we do. So it has been, so it will be until Bush goes. But of course, we changed Governments in name only, most of the Rudd ‘team’ are just as rabidly Right-Wing and authoritarian as Howard’s mob were.
And we ARE fighting Bush and Cheyney’s Dirty and all-out War against Muslims, are we not?! Don’t you know that Muslims are not really Human!? So they can be exterminated and dislodged at our will!
So goes the Bush Doctrine, but perhaps not the one ‘not known’ by ‘Pit-Bull’ Palin, possibly the most dangerous person ever to seek the US Presidential office, after GWB.
Dazza.
Hi Venise,
With the greatest respect, I really do think you need to carefully differentiate a fascist contempt for people other than one’s own group/position/stance and a more socialist compassion for other people who may be misguided and pressured by a combination of very poor education and desperate circumstances when you attack the struggling people of Bangla Desh.
I am particularly concerned at your ‘fascist Utopian’ attitude to population, with respect - if you think that there are too many people on the Earth, then the logical course of action is to eliminate the one of them closest to you, the one in your own skin.
But no. People are precious. People have the potential to rise above the predicaments and disasters of the world, some of which the ymay have caused, and find solutions. The people of the world have enormous genius, Venise, they are not to be written off so easily. Every life is precious - if its holder can be brought along to value it, and treasure it, and build up its potential, then who knows what we can achieve ?
Surely we must hold this ideal close to our hearts ?
Best wishes, Venise, I hope that you recover your respect for every human being.
Joe
Hi Dazza,
How’s life up the mountain ? Maybe you’re right - we’ll all be rooned if we don’t listen to you, and believe you, chapter and verse, with bated breath. How do you maintain your incredible radicalness ? Yes, Palin is a sort of Bush-Lite, if there were such a thing. But although I like my vegemite, I don’t spoon it on as it were cream cheese, to prove I do.
Joe
Hi Joe. One would have hoped that you had stopped guzzling that mind-boggling moonshine by now, old son, it sure addles the brain. Seems it imbues vitriol at the same time.
Actually, the fact that the world’s main problem is that it is massively overpopulated with humans is the one thing that I can agree with V.Alstergren on. Human life has no more value than that of a fly in the greater scheme of things. In truth, humans do far more damage to their own environment than any other creature on Earth. I think it is sometimes called ‘s..tting in our own nest’! Sure, some birds do that, but they also clean it up. We are more intent on getting rich at someone else’s expense, and cleaning up our now very dirty nests is never going to be done while personal greed is the only driver. Witness the screaming protestations of the Business Lobby (Big Coal in particular) against them actually having to pay something towards cleaning up the Global Warming mess, to which they and their mates have so willingly and greedily contributed.
And I do not like Vegemite, it is too loaded with nasties like salt, so should be used in moderation, if at all, Joe.
And if you are referring to ‘PitBull’ Palin (one of her many very expressive names), it seems that a certain type of Yankee, very short on intelligence and common sense, want nothing less than to pile her poison into their systems in great quantities. The rest of the world can only cringe at the so-called ‘democracy’ that could perhaps foist this ‘monster’ on to us. As one more aware Yankee said on a blog, they have had eight years to fix the scrambled American voting system, and have done absolutely NOTHING! So it is still totally open to Republican ‘shennanigans’, as it was in the past elections. We can also be reminded that a fair portion of the American media is controlled by one who was once called the ‘Dirty Digger’, one Rupert Murdoch, who, as usual, is running feral against the Democrats. Put all this together and there is far too much of a chance that the ‘Pit Bull with Lipstick’ will be a slight missing heartbeat from the U.S. Presidency, and the Nuclear Button, which seems to be dear to her shootin’ and killin’ heart. Excellent article here;
Dazza.
Chaos scrolls to the comments - sees Venise has posted so knows the article is not worth reading….sorry Peter.
Shades of Latin America here - isn’t it great to be the 51st state? (OK, maybe 52nd if you count Britain.) Peter, if you’re reading these comments, could you provide us with a bit more info on ASG’s CIA links? I know Janjalani was a mujahedin and in that sense experienced direct or indirect CIA-ISI support, but more info than that is taking a bit of trawling. As for why we’re working with one party over another, it’s clearly a case of values: we value natural resources, we value our relationship with the US and - by extension - Gloria ‘tough on terror’ Arroyo, and will work with parties that share those values. The ASG, by contrast, values a say and a share in what happens where they live. No wonder we don’t understand them.
http://philannetta.blogspot.com
Palin Bush-lite? Not from where I’m sitting. I think he did as much damage to the world as he could before his time ran out but she can be trusted to carry the sacred flame, delivering to her fellow Americans a brave new world cleansed of abortion, evolution, baby seals, niggers, queers, towel-heads and foreigners.
philanetta, The Netherlands is the 51st state of the Union - and far, far more conservative than Australia, one and all, though some may find that hard to believe; the UK comes in well after Russia (their - meaning Russians - English is just as hilarious as that of the Dutch, plus, they have Putin..I think I’d almost prefer George Wanker Bush).
I think that the current strife in the Phillipines has more to do with the people living there than with any involvement Australia might’ve had during the preceding decennia. Both sides are just as bad as each other, full stop.
As for Bangladesh, we have all had a part to play. The Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, etc, etc will go first.
Maybe Australia (and/or even New Zealand) could grant these nations a few thousand square miles each to re-set themselves up as independent nations. Remember where you read this first..in a reactions column to the strife on Moro..and I’m claiming the credit.