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Thursday, February 22, 2007
Malacañang releases Melo report
MANILA (Updated 2:50 p.m.) - Malacanang released Thursday the Melo Commission report a day after UN special rapporteur Philip Alston asked the Arroyo government to release the results of the probe on extrajudicial killings in the country.
President Arroyo, in a statement, vowed to take action against rogue elements in the military linked to the extrajudicial killings but also challenged Alston's comments.
Arroyo Watch: Sun.Star blog on President Arroyo
Both Malacanañg and the Armed Forces said the UN report is one-sided and unfair.
Alston said Wednesday the military "is in a state of almost total denial of its need to respond effectively and authentically to the significant number of killings, which have been convincingly attributed to them."
"The government is not in denial," Arroyo said in a statement. "These killings will be resolved and the armed forces shall continue to be a vanguard for freedom."
She said Alston leveled "some serious views that we take constructively," and called on the nation to unite to bring down "a generation of political violence."
Alston's investigation was backed up by a fact-finding commission headed by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo, which was released to the public Thursday under international pressure. It also found the military complicit in the deaths.
It said "a small military group" was behind the rash of killings of left-wing activists and that "the 'purge' theory cannot be accorded credence."
The report was submitted to Arroyo last month but the government had initially refused to make it public, saying it was incomplete.
"It is painful to read the report's findings that some members of the military may have been involved in some of the crimes, just as it is devastating when members of the NPA take action to kill innocent victims or even their own comrades," Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said.
Bunye in distributing the report to the press said the President believed that the majority of soldiers were not involved.
"We know that most members of the Armed Forces are doing their job," the spokesman said. "But there are some bad eggs. We all recognize that we have a problem."
Parts of the Melo report were cited by military chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon in a strongly worded letter to the commission as unfair and baseless.
Esperon said the Melo Commission's conclusion "is strained, unfair and a blank accusation against any member or any group from the Armed Forces of the Philippines" because it did not cite any strong evidence or identify the suspects.
In a press conference in Camp Aguinaldo, Esperon scored both reports of the Melo Commission and Philip Alston for reportedly ignoring the alleged purge within the ranks of the New People's Army.
On the Alston report, Esperon said the UN human rights expert is "in denial himself," saying Alston "was not too enthusiastic" when the Armed Forces presented to him the report on alleged purging of communist members.
AFP chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, meanwhile, said that he welcomed Alston's findings but said the military was not in denial about anything.
"We believe that Alston may be in a state of denial himself," Esperon said, charging that the UN envoy had not investigated the military's allegations that the communist insurgents were behind over a thousand murders.
Local rights group Karapatan says more than 830 people have been murdered for political motives since Mrs. Arroyo came to power in 2001 -- many of them leftists, and some of them accused by the Army of links to the guerrillas.
The military on Thursday shifted blame to the communist insurgency for the spate of political killings in the country after separate investigations by a United Nations envoy and a Malacañang-formed commission blamed it for most of the murders.For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Iloilo. (February 22, 2007 issue)
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