News
American soldiers face murder raps
VILLAGERS from Umapoy Island, Sipangkot ng Sitangkai, Tawi-tawi filed cases of murder and other human rights violations against forces of the AFP, PNP and a number of American soldiers in July.
The barriofolk said that combined forces of the US Army, Philippine Army and police assaulted the island on May 25. The American soldiers, who were armed with machine guns, actively joined the AFP and PNP in firing indiscriminately at the village. Eleven peasants were accused of being members of the Abu Sayyaf and were illegally arrested and detained. The peasants were tortured, with three of them killed.
Four American soldiers and elements of the AFP and PNP were charged before the Commission on Human Rights-Western Mindanao. There are also plans to have the case investigated in congress.
32 soldiers charged with murder and abuses
A SERGEANT and 31 soldiers of the 44th IB were charged with murder for the death of Bacar and Carmelita Japalali in a military operation in September. The case was filed on September 10 at the Prosecutor's Office of Tagum City.
According to Bacar's brother Talib, the Japalali couple was sleeping in their home in Sitio Talaba, Barangay Bingcungan on the night of September 8 when the military strafed their house, hitting the couple and killing them. The military also fired on the neighboring house of Osmalic Ladia and Rosalim Padama. Japalali witnessed all of this.
To cover up their human rights abuses, the military in Southeastern Mindanao reported that the Japalali couple had been harboring New People's Army fighters. Earlier, they alleged that the couple was killed in a 10-minute encounter between the AFP and forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Militants condemn Comrade Sison's renewed repression
DEMOCRATIC and revolutionary movements worldwide condemned the US government's renewed repression of Jose Maria Sison (Ka Joema). Invoking the fascist USA Patriot Act, the US government prevented Ka Joema from receiving royalties last August from his new book Jose Maria Sison: At Home in the World�A Portrait of a Revolutionary.
The book, a collaboration with patriotic multi-awarded novelist and journalist Ninotchka Rosca, is based on a series of interviews by Rosca with Ka Joema and his wife Julie de Lima in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Rosca began writing it after an assassination attempt on Ka Joema in June 2001. The project was delayed when the US included the CPP, the New People's Army and Ka Joema in its "terrorist" listing in August 2002.
The book contains Ka Joema's views and analyses not only regarding Philippine society and revolution, but on the perspective of the international anti-imperialist movement. It also serves as a biography of Ka Joema, who at the age of 65 has already spent 45 years in the service of revolution. The book contains an anthology of selected poems by Ka Joema, himself an award winning poet who received the Southeast Asia WRITE Award in 1986.
Rosca is a former member of Kabataang Makabayan and one of the founders of the Gabriela Network-USA.
NDF-Southern Mindanao condemns "Baker Piston"
THE National Democratic Front-Southern Mindanao Region (NDF-SMR) condemned "Baker Piston," a military training exercise involving American and Filipino troops ostensibly against "narcoterrorism" to be launched in Davao City and other parts of Mindanao. "Narcoterrorism" is the term used to refer to the involvement of so-called terrorist organizations in trafficking illegal drugs to raise funds.
In a statement on September 15, NDF-SMR spokesperson Rubi del Mundo said that the US was only using the anti-drugs campaign to further its intervention in the Philippines, especially in Mindanao. In particular, said del Mundo, the US wants to strengthen its military presence in Mindanao to control oil and other natural resources in the Brunei-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines corridor. The US also wants to pave the way for engaging the armed revolutionary movements advanced by the New People's Army (NPA) and the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF).
According to del Mundo, it is actually the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that is the world's number one sponsor of "narcoterrorism." In the case of Colombia, said del Mundo, the CIA secretly collaborates with producers of poppy plants, from which opium, morphine and heroin are derived, but accuses the country's armed revolutionary groups of being involved with drugs.
War against Iraq illegal�Kofi Annan
UNITED Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan did not beat around the bush and declared with finality on September 15 that the war the US launched against Iraq was illegal.
Annan said the invasion carried out by the US-led coalition did not have the UN's approval. He said there were only two reasons acceptable to the UN for waging war�when a country has to defend itself or when it needs to counteract impending aggression against it. Neither one existed in the case of Iraq.
In a related development, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) finally declared that there were indeed no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The ISG includes some 1,200 American and British experts commissioned by the "coalition of the willing" to search for weapons of mass destruction supposedly in Iraq's possession, which became the justification to invade it.
Despite all this, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair stubbornly insist they had legitimate reasons for waging war on Iraq.
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