Kin closer to justice for Philippine killings

The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/02/25/MNGGKOAPAQ1.DTL
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Sunday, February 25, 2007 (SF Chronicle)
Kin closer to justice for Philippine killings
Nick Meo, Chronicle Foreign Service


(02-25) 04:00 PST Manila -- For five lonely years, Evangelina Hernandez
waged a barely noticed campaign seeking justice for the beautiful daughter
who she says was murdered in cold blood by the military.
At last, with a government-appointed judge and a U.N. official blaming
military-backed death squads for the killings of hundreds of priests,
trade unionists and political activists since 2001, important people are
starting to listen to her.
Her daughter, Benjaline "Beng" Hernandez, was an idealistic 22-year-old
just out of college when she was killed on the southern island of
Mindanao, one of the poorest parts of the nation. At the time of her death
in April 2002, she was teaching peasants' children and helping victims of
the low-level conflict between the Philippine army and a communist group
called the New People's Army.
"She wanted to help her country," Evangelina Hernandez said. "I had no
idea that what she was doing would be dangerous."
Hernandez insists her daughter was killed by gunmen from a
government-supported militia led by an army sergeant, probably on the
orders of senior officers fighting the New People's Party, the armed wing
of the Communist Party of the Philippines. In a quiet voice, she explained
how gunmen attacked the peasants, shooting several, including an
18-year-old woman.
Hernandez says a survivor of the attack told her he had seen Beng begging
for mercy before she was shot at point-blank range.
A poster printed by the 45-year-old housewife from Davao, Mindanao, has a
shocking picture of Beng's bloody corpse, her hands still raised in
supplication, along with an appeal for justice and another photo, taken
shortly before her slaying, of a smiling young woman at what should have
been the beginning of her adult life.
Earlier this month, Hernandez told her story to New York University law
Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur, who was
sent to the Philippines to investigate the extra-judicial killings in
areas where leftist guerrillas were active.
After initially saying little about the mounting toll, President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo issued a statement to the press Thursday saying, "The
government is not in denial. These killings will be resolved and the armed
forces shall continue to be a vanguard for freedom."
After years of assassinations, the issue finally came to international
attention when a retired judge, Jose Melo, appointed by the Arroyo
government to head an investigative commission, announced last month his
belief that soldiers had carried out most of the killings, although he
said he did not believe there was an official army policy of
assassination.
The government at first said it would not publish Melo's report, but
reversed itself after Alston, Arroyo's political opponents and a number of
diplomats, including the British ambassador, criticized that decision. The
report said Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan was responsible for an undetermined
number of killings by allowing, tolerating and even encouraging the
killings, according to the Associated Press.
New People's Army guerrillas continue to fight in the sugarcane fields and
forests of the Philippines, their cause fed by grinding poverty. Many of
the assassinations have been carried out in insurgency-affected areas.
Karapatan, a Philippine human rights group, contends the killing of
unarmed civilians is part of a brutal war being waged between security
forces and communists that has been going on since the 1960s. Karapatan
says 833 people have been slain and nearly 200 have disappeared since
Arroyo became president in 2001. The rights group says many journalists
have been targeted and contends that Archbishop Alberto Ramento, of the
Philippine Independent Church, was stabbed to death last year because of
his outspoken views.
The leftist group Bayan says 366 of its members are among the dead. The
government has disputed Karapatan's figures and has said the group is
purging its own ranks by assassination, as it has done in the past.
The army says the communists also operate assassination squads. The
Associated Press quoted armed forces Chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon as
criticizing the Melo commission and Alston for ignoring evidence of
alleged rebel assassinations and internal purges, and saying he believed
that portrayals of the military as carrying out assassinations was
propaganda.
Karapatan compares killings by death squads under Arroyo, a U.S.-educated
economist, to the brutality that the Philippines suffered during two
decades of martial law under disgraced strongman Ferdinand Marcos.
"The government is operating death squads. They hire assassins or recruit
them from the military or police," said Marie Hilao-Enriquez,
secretary-general of Karapatan. "People in the army say that even those
who give a glass of water to the NPA (New People's Army) have to be
'neutralized.' "
In her State of the Union speech last year, Arroyo praised Gen. Palparan.
After Melo's report accused the army of assassinations, the general
characterized the findings as communist propaganda.
"Gloria learned a lot from Marcos," Hilao-Enriquez said. "The horrors that
we saw under martial law have been brought back to the Philippines."
For the family members of those killed, the issue is justice. Beng
Hernandez was one of four activists working for Karapatan who have been
killed since 2001.
Maxima Punzal, a 72-year-old widow, said she cradled her dying son,
Leodegario, in her arms in their home in Manila as his assassin fired a
final shot into his body.
Leodegario Punzal, an artist, was a member of the Toiling Masses party but
was not a communist, according to his mother. "The army is operating death
squads on the orders of the president," she said.
Schoolteacher Erlinda Bajado, 65, whose husband was gunned down near his
home in 2005, also blamed Arroyo for the killings, saying, "These orders
naturally come from the highest position in the land." ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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