THE BANGSAMORO REVOLUTION IN THE PHILIPPINES

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CIA METHODS OF TORTURE APPLIED TO MORONG 43 IN THE PHILIPPINES

CIA-KUBARK TORTURE METHODS AND PSYCHO-WAR SCHEMES INFLICTED ON 43 HEALTH WORKERS IN THE PHILIPPINES

by E. SAN JUAN, Jr.
Philippines Cultural Studies Center



The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) occupies center-stage again in the Philippines, the laboratory in 1950-1960s for the Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam inspired by CIA agent Edward Lansdale who is credited for defeating the communist-led Huk uprising. Attention is being given to the CIA systematization of coercive techniques in handling prisoners, including diverse forms of torture, zealously implemented by the police/military officials of the corrupt, unpopular Gloria Arroyo regime.
Since the Abu Ghraib and the Guantanamo prison scandals, the world public has now become sensitized to the moral/political problem of torture, whether used in peace time or in war. In 1997 The Baltimore Sun first exposed the CIA’s training manual applying torture against anti-government subversives in Central America. The manual refers to the 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual based on the Vietnam-era predecessor called the 1963 “KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation.” Interviews of both victims and security agents in Honduras confirmed that kidnapping, surveillance, infiltration of spies, crowd control, torture and murder in the 1980s were committed by the U.S.-supported Honduran, El Salvadoran and Guatemalan military in the war against communism during President Reagan’s administration.
The CIA 1983 manual focuses on interrogation methods that, though prohibited by domestic and international law, can be used with approval by higher authority. The manual emphasizes that the questioner “has total control over the subject and his environment.” It recommends stripping suspects naked, keeping them blindfolded, and manipulating the “environment to create unpleasant and intolerable situations.” Old measures have been refined and geared for psycho-war: depriving prisoners of food and sleep, keeping them in rigid positions, threatening family and loved ones and showing how they are suffering or are in danger, bribery, etc. Why are these effective? Because “the threat to inflict pain may trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain.” This supplements actual physical pain inflicted in the course of arrest and incarceration.
The thrust of the 1983 CIA torture formula is psychological: ‘The pain which is inflicted upon [the detainee] from outside himself may actually intensify his will to resist…but pain which he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance” (Cohn et al, 1997). Hence, the need for the prisoner to maintain rigid positions” etc. in which “the immediate source of pain is not the ‘questioner,’ but the subject himself.” Once a confession is obtained, the pressures are lessened so that this “friendly handling” will induce further cooperation. What stands out, however, is the emphasis on prolonged solitary confinement and other types of sensory deprivation which generates unbearable stress, anxiety, etc. Hypnosis, drugs, medical, chemical or electrical methods could be used to accelerate acquiescence, with help from psychiatrists, anthropologists/cultural experts, medical personnel, and so on.
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee noted in a 1989 memorandum that the early 1963 KUBARK manual used in Vietnam was used in Honduras, with slight tweakings to produce the 1983 version. A Website on “Is there a torture manual?” by Josh Clark states that both manuals coincide in methods of inducing a detainee to volunteer information: “Artificial light, isolation, unfamiliarity and disorientation through solitary confinement and sensory deprivation,” sleep deprivation, prolonged stress, electric shocks, etc., are combined with the more sophisticated coercive tactics demonstrated at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other “rendition” prisons (http://science.howstuffworks.cpm /torture-manual.htm). In The Shock Doctrine (2007), noted author Naomi Klein details the academic origin and sociopolitical ramifications of this new paradigm of torture discovered during the Cold War but deployed and finessed by successive U.S. administrations to preserve its violent interventions and hegemonic control in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, courts in Spain and elsewhere are now planning to try officials of the Bush administration for crimes against humanity, with help from the US Center for Constitutional Rights.

Inventing a Global Conscience

Most informed people today know that in the light of Vietnam and the horrors in Chile, Honduras, Colombia, and other Cold War battlefields, the United Nations has tightened restrictions against torture. The 1985 U.N. Convention Against Torture, ratified by 25 countries (except the U.S.), strengthened the 1950 Geneva Convention prohibiting degradation and humiliation of war prisoners. The UN Convention defines torture as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession” (4 Feb. 1985 )
The Philippine group KARAPATAN has fully substantiated the Arroyo regime’s culpability in violating the UN Convention provisions, as well as the Philippine Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The 2007-2009 reports on human rights violations and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines by Philip Alston, U.N. rapporteur for human rights; by Amnesty International and by Human Rights Watch, among others, re-emphasized the need for the Philippine government to conform to United Nations and international law standards. What strikes this author is that since the Marcos dictatorship’s unconscionable crimes, followed by the hypocritical promises of reform by Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo (the Melo Commission and Task Force Usig), international groups keep repeating the need for government action, when everyone knows that the oligarchic political-economic system and the social classes in control can never deliver justice and guarantee respect for human rights: not one military or police personnel has been convicted for torture, abduction, and extrajudicial killings in the last 40 years (see the various surveys in Buck and Wolf 2008).

The UN, Amnesty International, World Council of Churches, and others keep advising Arroyo to reform. But to no avail, as the treatment of the Morong 43 demonstrates since their detention last February. Forty-two community health workers and doctors were conducting health-skill training seminars in Morong, Rizal, Philippines, sponsored by legal public organizations when they were arrested at the farmhouse of Dr. Melecia Velmonte, a retired medical professor at the University of the Philippines. They were violently frisked, blindfolded, and held incommunicado in a remote military camp—a prolonged experience of State terrorism predicated on the unproven guilt of the suspects (San Juan 2010).
In March the Philippine Court of Appeals denied their constitutional right of habeas corpus on the basis of a Marcos-era doctrine that such detainees can no longer be released since the AFP/PNP has filed a case in court (that is, the charge of illegal possession of explosives and firearms, planted by the arresting agents). This despite the defective warrant of arrest and the legally flawed inquest proceeding. The Public Interest Law Center and the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers argued that the Court disregarded the litany of the violations of the constitutional rights of the 43 health workers during their unlawful arrest. While you read this, the experience of torture suffered by these 43 persons in the military camp worsens by the hour, 24 hours of every day.
In an incisive critique of the Court’s judgment, Prof. Gill Boehringer pointed out that the Court “ignored the illegalities committed in the search, arrest and subsequent proceedings,” supposedly “cured” by the filing of criminal charges (Bulatlat 12 April 2010). Two dissenting justices bewailed the toleration of illegal arrests and detention for the sake of a dubious “curative information.” In short, the Court favored the AFP/PNP instead of the 43 citizens, despite the illegality of the search and brutal detention process. Justice is on the side of the oligarchic State, not the citizens who are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Hobbes’ monstrous Leviathan, comprised here of the ruthless military, police, and the authoritarian Arroyo bureaucracy and retainers, reigns supreme—this despite the worldwide call for ending the torture and detention by the Catholic Bishops Conference last April 7, by the U.S. National Nurses United (with 150,000 members), and numerous international organizations. Indeed, Arroyo may have already surpassed Marcos in her regime’s flagrant atrocities and the military/police brutalization of thousands of suspected citizens, all in the name of free-market democracy and US hegemonic domination over the planet.

A Tradition of Dehumanizing

All the methods recommended in the two CIA manuals cited earlier were employed by the AFP/PNP and legitimized by the Philippine Court of Appeals. We cannot detail here the variations and nuances of their application. Of interest is the use of the element of surprise in the time and manner of arrest so as to achieve “the maximum amount of mental discomfort.” The CIA recommends early hours of the morning to arouse “intense feelings of shock, insecurity and psychological stress.” To prevent the detainees from relaxing and recovering from the shock, the manual recommends that prisoners be blindfolded, stripped and given a thorough examination, including all body cavities. When 300 soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) personnel “with covered nameplates” descended on the sleeping quarters and training venue of 43 doctors, nurses and trainees, it was early morning. I quote their Press Statement of April 12: “They bodily searched our male and some female companions, herded us into driveway, handcuffed and blindfolded us and brought us to Camp Capinpin,” a tightly guarded headquarters of the 202nd Infantry Brigade.
The “standard operating procedure” of the CIA/Pentagon’s “shock and awe” strategy is followed. The detainees’ plea for lawyers, search warrants, and other demands were turned down; they were segregated, some in solitary confinement. Disruption of routine and normal life (their reduction to the level of object/animal) was fundamental. The detainees were handcuffed and blindfolded, harassed, threatened for 36 hours, 48 hours for some.” They testify that “We were deprived of sleep and from time to time questioned and forced to admit that we are NPAs [New People Army guerillas]. We were fingerprinted while blindfolded. Our pictures in three views were taken.”
Blackmail, continuous interrogation, repeated threats and intimidation, prolonged constraint (incommunicado), and deprivation of “normal routine” in eating and sleeping, constant surveillance, and everything “to induce psychological regression” by a superior force to bear on his will to resist”—all these can be gleaned from the following testimony released to the public under lawyer’s advice:
“Questioning, threatening and deceitful offers of house and lot, money and freedom in exchange for military ‘cooperation’ by our military captors continued at the detention center anytime of the day until the last week of February. Questions asked by our military captors were not related to the making of explosives or firearms. Some of us are still in isolation cells. We were deprived of legal counsel for 5 days after our arrest and doctors of our own choice. Five of our companions were deceitfully and forcefully removed from our detention center. They are made to cooperate with the military for the latter’s propaganda purposes and to testify against us….
Our outside morning exercises are curtailed, hot water and drinking water is limited or even stopped and sun drying of our laundry is banned if military captors get angry with us for no reason. Confiscation of paper, writing materials, tissue and even plastic continues. Bugging device is installed. We are photographed by our military captors when going to court hearings. We are videotaped when government officials visit us.” Other methods of torture include: denying privacy in the bathrooms, limiting visiting times for family, reshuffling detainees from one jail to another, solitary confinement, constant guarding even with relatives, threats of salvaging or extrajudicial execution; threat of being “roasted” or “rotting in jail,” or killed outright; threat of the arrest of father and mother, and various forms of intimidation.
Doctors from the Council for Health and Democracy, Community Medicine Foundation, and other organizations have “deduced that the military may have also electrocuted” the detainees and used chemical and pharmacological torture” (Marya Salamat, Bulatlat, 1 March 2010 ).

Sign Your Own Death Sentence

In earlier reports, we learn that apart from grueling interrogations, two of the detainees (Valentin Paulino and Ramon de la Cruz) were forced to admit their membership in the communist New People’s Army by signing affidavits. Paulino complained to his mother that the AFP was subjecting him to beatings and mental torture (BAYAN Press Release, 26 Feb. 2010; in Bulatlat Website). Two others were isolated and pressured to cooperate: Jennilyn Pizarro and John Mark Barrientos. Meanwhile, Cherrilyn Tawagon and Ellen Carandang were offered P50,000 as reward for “rebel returnees.” The detainees were served spoiled meager food, condemned by Father Diony Cabillas as “inhumane and cruel” (reported by Ronalyn Olea, Bulatlat, March 10, 2010).
Acting under orders from their superiors, including Arroyo, Gen. Jorge Segovia and Col. Aurelio Baladad have refused volunteer medical doctors to examine the detainees. Two of them, Dr. Alex Montes (who was physically manhandled earlier) and Glenda Murillo are suffering serious symptoms, but are denied proper treatment. The Permanent People’s Tribunal summarized the classic plight of KUBARK victims in their February letter to Arroyo based on the report of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights: the detainees “remained in handcuffs and blindedfolded for more than 36 hours; they were denied food and bathroom privileges, confined in dark cells, forced to listen to sounds of gunfire and slapped several times during the night. They were not allowed to speak to each other and they were forced to admit that they were members of the New People’s Army.” Up to now the AFP/PNP have refused to allow them to appear in the Commission’s hearings or move them to civilian facilities more accessible to their lawyers and families, all reminiscent of the heyday of the infamous Honduran Battalion 316 and Central American death-squads.
Recurrent in the testimony are practices such as sudden disruption of routines, solitary confinement, threats of pain (to the detainee or her family), sexual molestation, maneuvers of surveillance (photographing, etc.) to which victims of CIA-tutored agents (trained in the School of Americas from 1987 to 1991) were invariably subjected. Though discontinued in 1992 and replaced by the U.S. Army’s FM 34-52 Intelligence Interrogation Manual (see Wikipedia on “U.S. Army and CIA Interrogation manuals ), the techniques are obviously still used by the AFP and PNP whose officials receive training from US advisers and US institutions, following various military treaties and executive agreements between the two nations. Since formal independence from the U.S. in 1946, both the AFP and PNP have received millions of tax-dollars in funding for training, equipment and logistics from the Foreign Assistance Program of the U.S. Congress chanelled through the CIA, US-AID, and numerous conduits and transmission-belts.

Localizing Subaltern Punishment

A great portion of the infamous CIA KUBARK manual actually originated in the Philippines, according to Alfred McCoy’s meticulously documented book Policing America’s Empire (2009). McCoy describes how US colonial occupation laid the foundation for the current authoritarian state, notably exemplified by the Marcos’ martial-law regime. The neocolonial state from Roxas to Arroyo has deployed clandestine penetration, psychological warfare, disinformation, media manipulation, massive surveillance, vigilante or para-military violence, assassination, and so on, to suppress civic criticism and popular dissent. His narrative takes us to the 1950 Cold War and the partnership of President Ramon Magsaysay and Lansdale “when the CIA tested new counterinsurgency doctrines,” and later “helped build a massive anti-riot force for metropolitan Manila” (2009, 19).
The CIA and other US agencies were instrumental in training elite Philippine Constabulary units such as the Metrocom Intelligence Service Group (MISG) and the Fifth Constabulary Security Unity (CSU; later renamed Regional Security Unit 4). With such notorious torturers as Col. Rolando Abadilla and Major Rodolfo Aguinaldo, these units (with the help of the “seeds” of the private armies today, the Civilian Home Defense Forces) terrorized the population. From 1979 to 1989, the MISG and CSU displayed extreme brutality in using extensive electric shocks, sensory deprivation, temperature modifications, blindfolding, and psychological techniques such as those inflicted on the Morong 43. Col Abadilla studied at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and Major Aguinaldo was trained by CIA instructors in still unverified sites.
The Marcos dictatorship prides itself in its record of arresting at least 70,000 people, torturing 35,000 and killing at least 3,257—2,500 of these victims were “salvaged,” that is, tortured and killed, with the scarred remains dumped for display to terrorize the public. Of the many tortured, McCoy cites the case of civic leader Trinidad Herrera. She was arrested in May 1977, “stripped naked, and forced to wind an electric wire around her nipple” by state security led by Edward Matillano and Prudencio Regis, who, after trial, were declared not guilty for any violation. McCoy also cites the case of Melvin Cayabyab, two months pregnant, who was sexually molested, “given electric shocks through wires placed on her thumbs and threatened with rape and application of electric shocks to her vagina and nipples” (406). McCoy observes that “these Filipino interrogators carried the CIA’s psychological paradigm into its ultimate dimension,” to an “expansive theatricality” and “lurid brutality” that may be seen, for example, in Lino Brocka’s still censored film, ORA PRO NOBIS or the recent film DUKOT directed by Joel Lamangan. Torture has become banal, even trivialized in bureaucratic U.S. State Department Human Rights reports and their nullity in impact.

Remembrance of Things Recurrent

After September 11, 2001, the US war on global terrorism (or Islamic extremism) has retooled the CIA methods for a new type of “low intensity warfare,” as former CIA agent Philip Agee noted in a 2003 review of US “covert actions.” “Low-intensity warfare” was the term for U.S. counterinsurgency in Central and South America, and in the Philippines (see Klare and Kornbluh 1989); its latest incarnation is the presence of a U.S. base of Special Forces in Zamboanga directing the raids against the Abu Sayyaf and the NPA (Docena 2008), and the series of AFP campaigns against the NPA known as Oplan Bantay Laya I and II.
William Blum reminds us that in 1987, during Corazon Aquino’s presidency, Reagan approved a $10 million, two-year plan for increased CIA involvement in the counter-insurgency campaign. The CIA undertook large-scale psychological warfare operations and U.S. military advisers routinely accompanied Philippine troops during their maneuvers” (2005, 190; see Smith 1976, for CIA relations with Macapagal, Arroyo’s father, and other Filipino politicians). With AFP/PNP assignment to US training centers and with the JUSMAG (Joint U.S. –Philippine Military Advisory Group) and the Visiting Forces Agreement enforcing and preserving Washington/Pentagon’s ascendancy over the Philippine state, we will see the KUBARK trademark visible in the stigmata of torture victims such as the Morong 43 and many others. Indeed, the CIA is alive and well in the Philippines, thanks to the subservience of the decadent quasi-feudal oligarchy, the traditional landlords and compradors whose mercenary generals and judges thrive while nine to ten million OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) remit $14 billion to prop up the bankrupt economy (San Juan 2007).
A huge library of human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, torture, abductions, etc. has accumulated during Arroyo’s tenure. One can cite the cases of human rights activists Eddie Gumanoy, Eden Marcellana, and Benjaline Hernandez who received the KUBARK treatment from Arroyo’s celebrated general Jovito Palparan. Other cases of torture by the military documented by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines, the International Action Center, and the Asian Commission for Human Rights include Pastor Andy Pawican; United Methodist couple Librado and Martina Gallardo; Nueva Vizcayan farmer Ruel Marcial; Pastor Berlin Guerrero; lay missionary Angelina Bisuna-Ipong; Reynaldo and Raymond Manalo, detained and tortured by forces under Gen. Palparan, named by the government’s Melo Commission as responsible for political killings.
In June 2007, Sophie Richardson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, urged the US to consider suspending military aid to the Philippines unless members of its military suspected in extrajudicial political killings have been prosecuted. Human Rights Watch released its 84-pages report entitled “Scared Silent: Impunity for Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines” which documents the Arroyo security forces’ involvement in murder of members of leftist political parties, nongovernment organizations, journalists, clergy, activists, and so on; none of the military or police implicated in these killings have been successfully prosecuted (“Dirty War by the AFP,” Newsweek 28 June 2007). As of October 2009, Arroyo is credited (since Jan. 2001) with 1,118 politically motivated summary executions, 204 enforced disappearances. 1,026 tortured victims, 1,946 illegal arrests, and 255 political prisoners (Lefebvre 2010). Even the recent US State Department report on human rights in the Philippines re-confirmed in general the periodic reports of KARAPATAN on continued impunity for the AFP /PNP in their barbaric ritual of torture practised on the Morong 43 and others.

Apocalypse Now or Tomorrow?

Prompted by the horrendous Maguindanao massacre of 60 civilians in the Philippines last November, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth visited the Philippines this week to find out what is being done with private armies. “Nothing can be done about it,” leading presidential contenders Noynoy Aquino and Manuel Villar in effect replied. (Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 26, 2010). The recent furor over “waterboarding” terrorist suspects by the occupying US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan evoked the “water cure” systematically used against Filipino revolutionaries in the Filipino-American War of 1899-1913. That war also witnessed hamletting, scorched-earth tactics, shooting prisoners, and clandestine surveillance and assassinations by the US occupying army, a model used by neoconservative pundits like Max Boot for the ongoing US “democratization” of Iraq and Aghanistan. A recent survey by Canadian scholar Priscilla Lefebvre summed up the whole Arroyo tenure as a sustained “war against the people through State violence” (2010). Short of a revolutionary mass upheaval, it appears that the CIA KUBARK torture techniques and its legitimization by the policing and jurisprudence system in the Philippines still have a long way to be “tweaked” and streamlined before its final scrapping.

REFERENCES

Agee, Philip. 2003. “Tracking Covert Actions into the Future.” In Covert Action, edited by Ellen Ray abnd William Schaap. Melbourne and New York: Ocean Press.
Amnesty International. 2006. Political Killings, Human Rights, and the Peace Process. London. UK: Amnesty International. ASA35/006/2006/en/dom-ASA350062006en.pdf>
Blum, Wiliam. 2005. Rogue State. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press.
Boehringer, Gill. 2010. “Blighted: Philippine Jurisprudence and State Repression – The Morong 43.” Bulatlat (12 April):
Buck, Phillipp and Hannah Wolf, eds. “Political Killings and the Rule of Law.” Focus Asien: Schriftenreihe des Asienhauses. Berlin, Germany: Asienhaus / Action Network Human Rights-Philippines.
Cohn, Gary et al. 1997. “Torture was taught by CIA.” The Baltimore Sun (27 January).
Docena, Herbert. 2008. “Unconventional Warfare: Are U.S. Special Forces Engaged in an “Offensive War’ in the Philippines?” in The US and the War on Terror in the Philippines, edited by Patricio Abinales and Nathan Gilbert Quimpo. Manila:Anvil.
International Action Center. 2007. Fact Finding Report on the Philippines. New York: International Action Center.
Klare, Michael and Peter Kornbluh, eds. 1989. Low Intensity Warfare. Quezon City: Ken Incorporated.
Klein, Naomi. 2007. The Shock Doctrine. New York: Picador/Henry Holt and Company.
Lefebvre, Priscillia. 2010. “A State of Terror: The Death of Human Rights in the Philippines.” The Bullet (E-Bulletin No. 346). (April 28).
McCoy, Alfred. 2009. Policing America’s Empire. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Morong 43. 2010. “Press Statement of the Morong 43.” Bulatlat (12 April).
National Council of Churches of the Philippines. 2007. “Let the Stones Cry Out”: An Ecumenical Report on Human Rights in the Philippines and a Call to Action. Quezon City, Philippines: National Council of Churches.
San Juan, E. 2007. US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines. New York: Palgrave.
___. 2010. “Global Protests Mounting Against US-financed State Terrorism in the Philippines.” Political Affairs (March 1-31, 2010).
Smith, Joseph B. 1976. Portrait of a Cold Warrior. New York: Ballantine Books.

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E. SAN JUAN, Jr. is emeritus professor of Ethnic Studies, English & Comparative Literature from several U.S. universities. He was recently a fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University. His recent books are In the Wake of Terror (Lexington), US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave), Critique and Social Transformation (Edwin Mellen), and Toward Filipino Self-Determination (SUNY Press). He recently finished a translation of the Tao Te Ching/Dao De Jing into Filipino, the national language of the Philippines (see the Wordpress Website “Philippines Matrix Project”).

From POLITICAL AFFAIRS.NET: Global Protests Against Arroyo State Terrorism

Online at: http://politicalaffairs.net/article/view/9333/

Global Protests Mounting Against US-financed State Terrorism in the Philippines
By E. San Juan, Jr.


After the terrible catastrophes in Haiti and Chile, the ongoing Philippine social “earthquakes” may seem trite, though they impact on close to a hundred million Filipinos. Its tremors are being registered by 3 million Filipino residents in the U.S. and a million in Canada. Apart from the paltry statistic that the majority in the U.S.’s longest neocolony, the Philippines, subsists on less than $2 a day, and ten percent of the population live abroad as low-paid migrant workers around the planet, one of the worst massacres in recent history occurred in Maguindanao, a strife-torn province in the southern Philippines.

The 2009 Human Rights Report of the US State Department released a few days ago scored the regime of de facto president Gloria Arroyo as guilty of the “killing of civilians and journalists.” To quote the Report: “Arbitrary, unlawful, and extrajudicial killings by elements of the security services and political killings…continued to be major problems…Members of the [State] security services committed acts of physical and psychological abuse on suspects and detainees, and there were instances of torture” (GMA News.TV, 14 March 2009). An unprecedented indictment, inconceivable during the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld tenure.

Rehearsal for Draconian Martial Rule

A flagrant instance of the impunity with which the Arroyo military and police are inflicting atrocities on civilians is the case of the “Morong 43.” On Feb. 6, 43 medical and healthcare workers were abducted and illegally detained while attending training seminars in Morong, Rizal. The event was sponsored by the prestigious Community Medicine Foundation Inc. and the Council for Health and Development. Over 300 soldiers and police barged into the farmhouse of well-known professor-physician, Dr. Melecia Velmonte, roughly blindfolded and handcuffed all 43 unarmed civilians and subjected them to 24-hours interrogation and all kinds of torture in Camp Capinpin, headquarters of the 202nd Infantry Brigade, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

After their lawyers filed a petition for habeas corpus, the AFP filed charges against them for illegal possession of explosives and firearms—evidences planted by the military and police. The Court of Appeals, relying on an outdated legal precedent (the 1985 “Ilagan versus Enrile” ruling) denied their right to be innocent before being proved guilty, ignoring the defective warrant of arrest and the AFP’s brutality. Punished physically and mentally by the shock of being judged criminals, the Morong 43 continue to be harassed and persecuted daily. A recent update names Vincent Paulino, Glenda Murillo and Dr. Alex Montes as suffering the effects of torture, according to Dr. Julie Caguiat of the Community Health Development Foundation, and Dr. Geneve Rivera, president of the Health Alliance for Democracy (report by Marya Salamat, Bulatlat, 1 March 2010).

Universal condemnation of the regime’s abuse has reached the imperialist heartland. US Senators Barbara Boxer and Daniel Inouye, and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, as well as officials of the US State Department, have been informed of the military abuses. The United Methodist Church sent observers to Camp Capinpin, while the World Council of Churches and the Permanent People’s Tribunal demanded the release of the Morong 43 (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 17 Feb. 2010; http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/). Joining them are two national labor groups, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Relations and the Asia Pacific American Labor Alliance, as well as numerous local Amnesty International chapters, BAYAN USA, and over 500 people’s organizations around the U.S. and Canada, that support the Filipino human-rights monitor, KARAPATAN, as well as the efforts of Chair Leila de Lima of the Commission on Human Rights who vowed to conduct hearings on the case by March 18.

Criminalizing Civil Rights

Fascist military officials manipulate the legal system to deprive citizens of fundamental human rights. Philippine Senators Jamby Madrigal and Pia Cayetano blasted the arrogant AFP officials, particulary Gen. Victor Ibrado, for criminalizing membership in leftist organizations and even lawful party-list groups such as Bayan Muna (illustrated by the persecution of Representatives Satur Ocampo and Crispin Beltran). Sen. Madrigal accused the AFP of arrogant conduct, insulting the victims by awarding medals to officials guilty of blatant human-rights violations (report by Michael Ubac and Alcuin Papa, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 24 Feb. 2010). Romeo Clamor, deputy secretary general of KARAPATAN, whose wife Dr Merry Mia-Clamor is one of those detained, noted that this outrage forms part of the regime’s failed counter-insurgency plan, Oplan Bantay Laya II, which brands progressive critics of Arroyo as fronts for the Communist Party and New People’s Army in order to label them “enemies of the state, ” thus justifying their warrantless arrest, kidnapping or disappearance, and summary execution (report by Janess Ellao, Bulatlat, 7 Feb. 2010; see the criticism of AFP vigilantism by Prof. Michael Tan, Pinoy Kasi column, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 9 Feb. 2010).

Consequently, Arroyo’s butchers, headed by Gen. Jorge Segovia, Col. Aurelio Baladad, and Col. Jaime Abawag, and their superiors refuse to be deterred. They take pride that no military personnel has so far been charged guilty for over 1,000 extrajudicial murders and forced “disappearances” since Arroyo usurped power in 2002. As Atty. Edre Olalia of the National Union of People’s Lawyers clarified the chain of accountability, Arroyo cannot leave office with impunity: “These illegal acts are being condoned or sanctioned by the highest officials of the land, from the Commander-in-chief and the AFP chief of staff” (Bulatlat 26 Feb. 2010).

Apprenticeship in Barbarism

The fascist militarization of the Philippine government started with the beginning of the Cold War, as noted by Renato Constantino (Insight and Foresight, 1977). Since Col. Edward Lansdale, the notorious creator of the “Phoenix” assassination program in Vietnam in the Sixties, trained AFP officials in US CIA schemes, the AFP and state security agencies have been infamous in terrorizing ordinary citizens. Hernando Abaya (in his biography, The Making of a Subversive, 1984), CIA agent Joseph Smith’s account, Portrait of a Cold Warrior, 1976), William Chapman (Inside the Philippine Revolution, 1987), and Jose Diokno (Anti-Americanism, 1984), among others, have documented US interference in local politics. AFP officials now entrenched in government and their apologists in the local court system are implementing all the torture and psy-war techniques learned from the CIA and US Special Forces in Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan (as reviewed in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, 2007): electric shock, beatings, sexual molestation, bad food, deprivation of sleep and privacy, bribes, intimidation, separating detainees, threatening their families, and so on. This is synchronized with propaganda that the health workers are bogus, and they are members of the New People’s Army (stigmatized as “terrorist” by the Bush administration). All their Constitutional rights, as well as their basic human rights guaranteed by the United Nations Human Rights Charter and Covenants (to which the Philippine government is bound), are violated everyday.

A Filipina-American victim of the Arroyo paramilitary “death-squad,” Melissa Roxas, survived to tell her story of abduction and torture while on a medical mission to the Philippines last year. Roxas insisted that no human being should be deprived of liberty and dignity while trying to help people’s medical needs for lack of government concern. “Every day that the 43 health workers are not released,” Roxas argued, “it is one more day they have to endure pain, fear, and torture” (report by Jerrie M. Abella, GMANews.TV, 26 Feb. 2010)

Experienced observers of the Philippine situation have suggested that the Morong 43 is just an alibi, a media distraction to cover up Arroyo’s complicity in a far more heinous crime on top of unresolved corruption scandals. After all, the 43 health care workers are still alive, but 57 murdered people cannot be brought back to life. On November 23, 2009, those 57 civilians—including 32 journalists, with most of the female victims sexually mutilated—fell to the trap of Arroyo’s favored warlord, the Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao. By fake ballots and control of the electoral machinery in their fiefdom, the Ampatuans delivered the crucial thousands of votes that allowed Arroyo’s victory in the 2004 elections.

On December 2, 2009, in a special Press Release, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Philip Alston, and Frank La Rue, UN rapporteur on freedom of expression, both condemned “the pre-meditated killing of political opponents” –a “tragedy of the first order.” They urged Arroyo to go “beyond a criminal law response” and take measures to prevent “election-related violence.” Last March 6, in London, UK, a joint forum of Amnesty International, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the National Union of Journalists in Great Britain and Ireland, together with the Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines, held a commemoration program on the occasion of the 100th day of seeking justice for victims of the Maguindanao massacre. Jim Boumelha, president of IFJ, criticized in particular Arroyo’s Executive Order 546 which allowed the creation of neighborhood-watch type armed “force multipliers” (also known as Civilian Volunteer Organizations) as responsible for the Ampatuan massacre, as well as for countless disappearances and extrajudicial murders of activists (report by Rose Eclarinal, ABS-CBN Europe News Bureau, 6 March 2010).

From Impunity to Complicity

In the eyes of most Filipinos, Arroyo is directly and indirectly implicated with this ruthless bloodletting. The think-tank CENPEG (Center for People Empowerment in Governance) probed the origin of more than 200 private armies that Arroyo hypocritically vowed to dismantle after attempting to legitimize her martial-law exercise on Dec. 4 (Proclamation 1959). CENPEG traced it to Arroyo’s own support for political dynasties and their coercive instrumentalities: “It is an open secret that Pres. Arroyo coddled a local dynasty into a monster. The Ampatuans’ private armies were augmented not only to make sure that votes went to preferred candidates and political parties but also to pit lawless elements against rebels who threatened the clan’s local hegemony. Military soldiers, policemen and paramilitary units became part of the Ampatuans’ private armies….Civilian volunteer organizations (CVOs), said to be illegally formed, were armed as ‘force multipliers’ under Arroyo’s Executive Order 546, thus providing the pretext for their use not only by the Ampatuans but also by other local kingpins” (Issue Analysis No. 02, 27 Jan. 2010).

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group concurred in its 18-pages report that Arroyo “bears overwhelming responsibility for creating the conditions that led to the bloody massacre” (report by John Berthelsen, Asia Sentinel, 22 Dec. 2009). It concluded that “Political patronage by successive governments in Manila, most notably by the Arroyo administration, allowed the Ampatuans to amass great wealth and unchecked power.” Judging from the initial cavalier treatment of the Ampatuans by Arroyo’s advisers, and the failure of the AFP to apprehend all 183 suspects (one of them is Saudi Mokamad, head of the government’s 1507th Mobile Police Group) and the officious bureaucratic process of the investigations and trial, the consensus is that none of the private armies will be disbanded, nor will the collusion between political dynasties of oligarchs, military, local bureaucrats, compradors and transnational coporate interests, that have spawned the Abu Sayyaf and other bandit-groups, be diminished. It is even doubtful if any of the Ampatuans will be fully held accountable by the lopsided, heavily politicized justice system that tolerates the torture of the Morong 43.

Patronage over the Neocolony

On December 8, Representatives Howard Berman and Chris Smith introduced a concurrent Resolution in the US Congress condemning the senseless killing and called on the Arroyo regime to combat corruption and terrorism. This is like the proverbial appeal to the butcher to take care of the flock in the slaughter-house. But it is a symptom of ruling-class disenchantment at Arroyo’s gangsterism. Alarmed by the pattern of extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances of activists such as Jonas Burgos, and the torture of Melissa Roxas, the US Congress voted to withhold $2 million of the 2009 military aid to the Arroyo regime for failure to implement human rights stipulations attached to the Foreign Military Financing Act. The Senate Committee on Appropriations headed by Sen. Inouye is being pressured by various constituencies to cut off the use of American tax-payers’ money to finance Arroyo’s fascist measures to nourish her Bonapartist ambitions.

What can we expect in the weeks before the presidential brouhaha in May? The most likely scenario is that some of the health workers will be released on bail while others will continue to bear the brunt of military violence. “Divide and rule” policy will be applied. The Ampatuan trial will drag on until a compromise is reached with the incoming administration (assuming Arroyo does not grab emergency powers, declare a failure of elections due to defective automated poll machines, or stage bombings in line with the Marcos dictatorship’s formula for legitimizing martial despotism). The VFA will be modified to permit substantial US Special Forces, Balikatan Military Exercises, and other unconscionable practices to continue. It all depends on whether the US will be able to accomodate the Moro insurgents, or else shift their attention to Indonesia and Malaysia. Meanwhile, the war on terror will maintain the Abu Sayyaf as the scapegoat and pretext for continuing intervention in the Philippines. A dialectical-materialist analysis of the conjuncture of all the trends noted above spells the further disintegration of the neocolonial oligarchic status quo due to internal splits, the loss of US hegemonic sway with its gradual economic decline, and the resurgence of nationalist-democratic

influence on the middle strata, indigenous communities, and other sectors allied to peasant and proletarian mobilizations.

Seismic Alternatives to “Shock and Awe”

However, new developments might alter the balance of political forces. With the Feb. 3 murder of a Filipino civilian, Gregan Cardeno’s, employed by the US military in Camp Ranao, Marawi City, where the Philippine Army 103rd Brigade is based, and the electoral circus heating up to an obscene climax, the plight of the Morong 43 might be overshadowed—unless mass rallies and protests can connect it with the Ampatuan massacre. Surely, there will be the usual count of bodies in hotly contested electoral spots. Armed confrontations might heat up in regions where mining, plantations, and logging businesses flourish. The issue of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), as well as fear of new corruption inquiries, will force Arroyo to stifle any media expose of the maltreatment and sodomization of Cardenozz by US soldiers.

It’s not all quiet in the “western” front. Mobilization of OFWs in North America is going on parallel to those in Hong Kong, Europe and the Middle East. Not all such initiatives are enlightened, but most are symptomatic of neocolonial malaise. For example, a petition by concerned Filipino Americans concerning electoral fraud and violence was presented to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last March 10, with the request that a US delegation be sent to the Philippines. The model of Senator Richard Lugar’s observer team to the dictator Marcos’ 1986 “snap elections” was invoked. This is rather foolish and misplaced. What business tycoon Loida Nicolas Lewis and others should be persuading the Obama administration to do is to investigate and publicize to the US public the barbaric acts of their clients, Arroyo and her military minions. They should also demand the scrapping of the VFA which allows covert disastrous US military operations within Camp Navarro, Zamboanga City, for example, and allows US forces to engage in actual combat operations killing and wounding civilians under the guise of humanitarian and training exercises. The VFA violates not only the Philippine Constitution but flagrantly nullifies Philippine sovereignty. Countless Filipino lives have been sacrificed to service US imperial adventures since the slaughter of 1.4 million Filipinos in the Filipino-American War (1899-1913) with its inauguration of “waterboarding.” Not least of these global interventions are the genocidal “disaster-capitalist” (to borrow Klein’s rubric) wars against oppressed peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia, and elsewhere. Many of the victims of US drone bombings are women and children in villages in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, and other countries.

One of the victims of the U.S.-Arroyo war on global terror is the Filipino woman named Dom-an, widow of Jose Pepe Riberal Manegdeg III, assassinated by paramilitary agents on 28 November 2005. In her public testimony, Dom-an played her bamboo flute before an audience at the Frontline 5th Dublin International Platform for Human Rights Defenders and denounced the Arroyo regime for its brutal persecution and murder of human rights activists and progressives, what she called the haunting “scars of Marcosian Martial Law” (SPHP Global Network, Feb. 2010; http://sphpglobal.ning/com/group/philippinejudicialreformsmoement/forum). Revitalizing a militant spirit of solidarity, Sister Mary Soledad Perpinan, chair of the Third World Movement against the Exploitation of Women, recently urged a gathering in MetroManila: “For the sake of gender security and nationwide peace, the urgent call is to put an end to US military presence and intervention. The time is to act now!”