June 03, 2007	Sunday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 17, 1428

MANILA: The abduction of a high-profile human rights activist from a crowded Manila shopping mall has highlighted the Philippine government’s inability – or unwillingness – to end political killings and kidnappings, analysts say.

President Gloria Arroyo went to great lengths to assure political leaders during her visits to Japan, New Zealand and Australia recently that her government was doing its “utmost” to stop the killings.

But the abduction a month ago of Jonas Burgos, a 38-year-old activist and member of the Alyansang Magbubukid (Peasant Alliance), has rattled the government and many of its own supporters.

“The politics of fear has fuelled a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct and no one safe,” Tim Parritt, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific Programme, said.“The Burgos case is part of that spiral,” he said.

Two damning reports – one by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Philip Alston and the other by Arroyo’s own commission of inquiry, headed by retired Supreme Court judge Jose Melo – implicated the country’s military in many of the killings and abductions.

One of the key figures in the reports, now retired general Jovito Palparan, known as “the butcher,” ran for congress in the recent mid-term elections. The outcome is still to be determined due to the country’s slow, manual counting of votes.

Human rights groups and friends of the family have accused the military of being behind the abduction and disappearance of Burgos.

The military has denied the accusation despite the fact that the van that spirited Burgos from the mall was traced to a military base in the province of Bulacan, just outside Manila.

The problem for the government is that Burgos came from a prominent media family with a long tradition of human rights activism.

His late father and former publisher of the Malaya newspaper, Jose Burgos, was one of the country’s leading activists during the regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 80s.

Arrested and jailed by Marcos, Jose Burgos became an icon for press freedom not only in the Philippines but internationally.

“Hardly a day goes by without a fresh reminder of the essential importance of human rights in this country,” said Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, head of the European Commission’s delegation to Manila in an interview recently.

He said he was pleased that the Philippine Commission on Human Rights was looking into the Burgos case. “But frankly I am shocked about what this suggests about the culture of impunity in this country,” MacDonald said.

Ruth Cervantes, spokeswoman for the Philippine human rights group Karapatan, said the Burgos case “highlighted once again the government’s unwillingness or inability” to end political persecution in the country.

“Burgos was an agricultural scientist who worked with peasants in Bulacan, showing them how to improve their farming methods and crop yields. How can that be a threat to the government?” Karapatan has documented more than 800 murders of political activists, church workers, members of the judiciary and media since President Gloria Arroyo assumed power in 2001.

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales has said he is concerned by the disappearance of Burgos.

“We need to find him because this is not a joke,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in an interview recently.

“This is a big blow to the reputation of the government. I don’t know why these things are happening at this time.”

“This tragic incident is not good for the government. When you have those political killings and disappearances, what image is being created? That the government is not in control,” he said.

“The history of the desaparecidos is a blot on the government’s human rights record.” In an editorial the Manila Times said: “More than 1,600 Filipinos were abducted or disappeared under mysterious circumstances since the Marcos regime, according to a human rights group.

Senator Joker Arroyo said in a statement the abduction only highlighted “the internal struggle in the uniformed services between the progressives and the disciples of the take-no-prisoners, scorched-earth, attritional war of the traditional military establishment”.—AFP