Palace: Leftists may have gotten to UN exec

MANILA, Philippines—Malacañang disputed Saturday United Nations special rapporteur Philip Alston’s claim that the administration had failed to institutionalize the reforms needed to put a stop to extrajudicial killings, and suggested that Alston may have been influenced by leftist propaganda.

“That is unfair. Our government has done so many things,” Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said in an interview with state-run Radyo ng Bayan.

He said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s move to set up a P25-million fund to help solve the political killings was just the latest of the measures taken to address the issue.

In an April 29 followup to his 2008 report on the human rights situation in the country, Alston said the administration fell short of institutionalizing the reforms that he had recommended to stop the killings.

Chief among these, he said, were the failure to apply the principle of command responsibility in rights violations by state agents, poor protection for witnesses, and the lack of congressional oversight of the military and police.

In his 2008 report, Alston concluded that state security forces had killed leftist activists as part of a campaign against communist rebels.

Remonde also disputed Alston’s claim that the President’s order to the military to crush the communist insurgency by 2010 had been made an excuse to indiscriminately label political and civil society organizations as fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

“This has been the issue raised by front organizations which are shielding the insurgents. As the saying goes, ‘A lie repeated a thousands times will assume the substance of truth,’” he said.

Remonde said he believed Alston’s conclusion was largely influenced by the “propaganda” of left-leaning organizations, including human rights groups.

“The communist elements are good at the sword-and-shield strategy. They will do everything to destroy the government campaign against them,” he said, explaining that the communist insurgency was using rebels as the sword, and human rights groups as the shield.

Alston’s claims were also vigorously denied by the military which maintained that it had not gone outside the law to meet the 2010 deadline for ending the communist insurgency.
Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesperson Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr. Saturday said the military did not resort to the unjust use of force to carry out the Commander in Chief’s orders.

“There is no truth to that. The mission to finish the insurgency by 2010 is being achieved through legal ways or through means that are within the bounds of the law,” he said. –TJ Burgonio, Alcuin Papa and Tarra Quismundo, Philippine Daily Inquirer