Friday, February 23, 2007 Ledesma: The ignorance of Alston By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
HE BARELY stayed 10 days in the Philippines, mostly in the confines of plush hotels, and mystery of mysteries this UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston became an expert of extra-judicial killings in the country.
I am no stranger to extra-judicial murders. For this stranger to put the blame on the military partakes of intellectual humbug and total ignorance of what this country went through. Let us not go far and take Davao City as a specific example.
Once a city known for its tranquility and almost idle pace, it was gripped and placed in horrific stranglehold by the New People's Army of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Of course we have a share of abusive cops, local thugs and blue collar criminals. I will not indulge anymore ON how the CPP-NPA crept into the city. But we have images of Nicaragdao in obvious juxtaposition with communist-held Nicaragua. In Agdao alone, there was a time when not less than 15 people were brutally killed daily by the Sparrows, the communist liquidation squad. Elsewhere in the city, we lost count of how many were murdered by the rampaging elements of the NPAs. These gory murders, done in broad daylight and in the presence of kin and the public, dissipated only when the masses rose against the killing squads and the NPAs in what has since then been known as Alsa Masa. Many NPAs escaped the ire of the masses but they had been marked and the crimes they committed are not forgotten to this day.
Then came the new breed of criminals. Unlike the Communists and the NPAs they have no ideology to lure the people with. They are the drug syndicates. For the record they have victimized more people, wrecked homes and future of the youths than the NPAs did. They are still very much around despite the unrelenting campaign waged by the government led by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.
Unlike the dreaded NPA hit squads known as the Sparrows, the drug syndicates do not shoot their victims or do their thing in public display. They do not instill fear to control the community. They peddle their drugs under cover of darkness, then entice their victims into addiction until they lose whatever is left of their sanity and morality and become virtual monsters. There are as many distraught parents as there are thousands of sons and daughters turning into helpless and hopeless addicts. They witnessed, at close range, how their children degenerate into wretchedness.
Many had vowed to avenge the death and sufferings of their beloved. They took the law into their hands because it is sweeter this way. It is more relieving this way. Philip Alston will never comprehend why because he will never know why. The enmity has not died down. The curdling of the blood has not simmered down. True the military and the police have their own crime to answer for, but many of the so-called extra-judicial killings partake of revenge. Many of the so-called political murders were attributed to "Operation Zombies." Zombies, Alston would understand, but in the context of extra-judicial killings I am certain the militant leaders with whom the UN rapporteur consulted will never tell him that it's the cleansing of the ranks by the NPAs of suspected government agents within their ranks. This is a continuing process and we expect no abatement for as long as there are surrenderees or returnees or for as long as the CPP-NPAs are at war with the government.
When he returns to the UN, Mr. Philip Alston will recite the litany of human rights violations in the Philippines. I knew that he too met with our Mayor Rody Duterte. I don't know whether he confronted the mayor about the Davao Death Squad. Maybe. I don't know too whether he confronted the mayor about the menace of the drugs and drug traffickers in the city. I don't know whether they talked of Nicaragdao and the Rano massacre. If they failed to take that up, Alston will go back to the US as ignorant as when he was 10 days ago of the ignominy of the extrajudicial killings which have hounded us before and now.
