Assassinations have occurred in the Philippines since the American colonial
period (McCoy, 2009). These are not confined to people involved in political
activism, as demonstrated by the killing of street children, petty criminals, and drug dealers in Davao City (Human Rights Watch, 2009). However, since 2001 therehas been a wave of assassinations targeting activists involved in left-wing causes. According to Karapatan5 (2010), from 21 January 2001 until 30 June 2010, 1,206 activists have been killed in the Philippines (see Table 1). The killings peaked in 2006 when 235 people were killed, exhibited a downward trend during 2007 (100 victims) and 2008 (90 victims) and then showed an upsurge.
According to Girlie Padilla, the International Liaison Officer of Karapatan,
the victims tend to be members of organizations on the left of the political
spectrum (Padilla, 2007). Audrey Beltran, the Public Information Officer of the
Cordillera Human Rights Alliance, indicated that those killed often belong to
organizations, such as peasant or labor groups (Beltran, 2007). Santos Mero, the
Deputy Secretary General of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), made it clear
that most victims are activists and “the more vocal people are, the more vulnerable they become” (Mero, 2007). Both genders have been targeted and the victims have included church workers, community organizers, human rights activists, journalists, local government officials, and political activists (Amnesty
International, 2006). In the words of Human Rights Now (2008, 6), “the majority
of targets are people who are lawfully criticizing governmental policies by means
of peaceful measures such as speeches, writing, and mobilizing people.” Most of
the killings seem to follow a methodology wherein the victims are shot while
carrying out routine activities by men riding motorcycles; after being shot, nothing
is taken from the victims and they are left to die (Beltran, 2007; Padilla, 2007).
The nature of these attacks indicates that the assailants had little fear of any police
reaction (Human Rights Now, 2008, 24).
According to Girlie Padilla, the International Liaison Officer of Karapatan,
the victims tend to be members of organizations on the left of the political
spectrum (Padilla, 2007). Audrey Beltran, the Public Information Officer of the
Cordillera Human Rights Alliance, indicated that those killed often belong to
organizations, such as peasant or labor groups (Beltran, 2007). Santos Mero, the
Deputy Secretary General of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), made it clear
that most victims are activists and “the more vocal people are, the more vulnerablethey become” (Mero, 2007). Both genders have been targeted and the victims have included church workers, community organizers, human rights activists, journalists, local government officials, and political activists (Amnesty
International, 2006). In the words of Human Rights Now (2008, 6), “the majority
of targets are people who are lawfully criticizing governmental policies by means
of peaceful measures such as speeches, writing, and mobilizing people.” Most of
the killings seem to follow a methodology wherein the victims are shot while
carrying out routine activities by men riding motorcycles; after being shot, nothing
is taken from the victims and they are left to die (Beltran, 2007; Padilla, 2007). The nature of these attacks indicates that the assailants had little fear of any police
reaction (Human Rights Now, 2008, 24).
Agreement is widespread that most killings can be attributed to the government in general, and to the AFP in particular. Instead of an unrelated series of murders carried out by criminals, the killings “constitute a pattern of politically targeted extrajudicial executions” (Amnesty International, 2006, 2).
The context for the killings is the forty-two year old conflict between the AFP and the NPA (see Table 2 and Figure 2), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Since the reestablishment of the CPP along Maoist lines in December of 1968, and the inception of the NPA in March 1969, this conflict has claimed over forty thousand lives and appears to show no sign of imminent conclusion . Since the 1996 peace accord between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) the secessionist conflict between the AFP and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has attracted substantial media attention.7 Nevertheless, the AFP-MILF conflict is confined to the vicinity of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) . In contrast to the MILF, the NPA (with approximately 7,000 armed cadres and a nationwide presence) is considered the most serious threat to the security of the Philippines “because of the breadth of its influence and the seriousness of its political struggle.”
The blueprint for the Philippine anti-insurgency operation plans (OPLAN) comes from the influence of the USA on the AFP. The Philippines was a colony of the United States from 1898 until 1935, an American protectorate from 1935 until 1946, and then a nominally sovereign nation hosting the two largest American foreign military bases in the world from 1946 until 1992. This heavy American influence resulted in the AFP becoming a military “steeped in United States support, strategies, and tactics” (Alamon, 2006, 153) and “more oriented toward and influenced by the United States than the armed forces of any other country in the developing world” (Thompson, 1996, 66). In the words of McCoy (2009, 19), “in the half century since independence, the United States has intervened almost every decade, working through its natural allies in the Philippine police and military to introduce aid, advisers, security doctrines, and covert operations.” The United States has influenced the AFP through training its officers; virtually all senior Filipino officers receive advanced training in the United States and military advisors are often sent to the Philippines
The specific influence of the United States military on the extrajudicial
killings of concern here was the Phoenix Program developed by American military
planners during the Vietnam War, “the most intensive- and portentous- US
imperial venture of the twentieth century” (Glassman 2007, 93). In Vietnam, the
United States decided that the most effective strategy for defeating the Viet Cong
lay with attacking its political infrastructure (Andrade and Willbanks, 2006;
Andrade, 1990). The Viet Cong could be engaged militarily but as long as it
remained able to maintain constant contact with the population it could not be
defeated (Andrade and Willbanks, 2006; Andrade, 1990). The solution lay with
destroying the Viet Cong’s political infrastructure (Nagl, 2008). To achieve this,
the Phoenix Program, a well-developed program of selective assassinations, was
implemented in 1968, resulting in the deaths of over 26,000 people until its
termination in 1972 (Andrade and Willbanks, 2006; Andrade, 1990). Phoenix
proved to be controversial; “while killing large numbers of important insurgents, it
did so at the cost of substantial human rights violations that lost public support
among the people of both Vietnam and the United States” (Nagl, 2008, 142).
Nevertheless, despite the controversy surrounding it, Phoenix was replicated by
United States military advisers to El Salvador in the early 1980s when the
Salvadorian military sought to suppress the Frente Farabundo Martí para la
Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) by eliminating
rebel leaders and sympathizers (Lauria-Santiago, 2005). By the early 1990s,
destroying insurgent infrastructure had become an established component of
American counterinsurgency doctrine, even though General Paul Gorman, the
commander of United States forces in Central America during the 1980s, described Phoenix-like Programs as “a form of warfare repugnant to Americans, a conflict which involves innocents, in which non-combatant casualties may be an explicit objective” (Lauria-Santiago, 2005, 101).
Today, the AFP is set upon eliminating the NPA by replicating Phoenix, and
is not just targeting its underground guerrilla organizations but is also seeking to
destroy legal organizations constituting its political infrastructure. Father Frank
Nally, an Irish Priest who spent nine years on the island of Mindanao, regards what is happening in the Philippines as an example of how the United States has trained militaries to conduct counterinsurgency warfare (Nally, 2007).
Although the number of killings decreased from 2006 to 2008 (Table 1) and
has not returned to 2006 levels, they are not ending (Alston, 2009). In the words of
Alston (2009, 5), “while current levels are significantly lower than before, they
remain a cause for great alarm.” Not one member of the AFP has been convicted
for killing activists and there is no evidence of any reforms to prevent the targeting
of activists. Although the killings have diminished, “too many cases continue to be
reported and far too little accountability has been achieved for the perpetrators”
(Alston, 2009, 12).
The extrajudicial killings in the Philippines are an example of state terrorism
wherein the state commits acts of violence against its own citizens to spread fear
among the population. The essential characteristic of state terrorism is not the
physical harm, or material destruction, of the victims but the reproduction of fear
among the population (Heryanto, 2006). In the Philippines, victims see their
organization listed as a communist front in Knowing the Enemy, find their names
on the order of battle, receive death threats, or find themselves visited by the
military regarding their political activities (as the Abarillos did before they were
killed). If the sole objective of government was to kill these people there would be
no need to provide them with advance warning of their deaths. However, when
someone is sent a death threat (or discovers their name on the order of battle) they
are given an opportunity to tell others that they have been targeted. When they are
killed their death sends a message to others that such threats possess veracity and
they may be next; in this context, terror “becomes a communicative strategy that
aims beyond the killings themselves to send a message to the survivors”
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