RESPONDING to charges that it is covering up military involvement in violent incidents against indigenous people in Mindanao, the Commission on Human Rights said its coming report will show that both the Armed Forces and the communist New People’s Army were involved in several incidents.
“How can they say that our report is whitewashed when we have given only a statement?” CHR Commissioner Roberto Eugenio Cadiz asked on Wednesday.
“If you read our statement, we’re just condemning both the AFP and NPA. Nobody will deny that these atrocities are being done by both sides and that is what came out during the public inquiry [conducted by the CHR],” he said.
“If we are whitewashing on the military, why is it that we are condemning the acts of the AFP and Malacañang is very angry with us?” he added.
“We will call human rights [violations] as we see them,” Cadiz said. “We are an independent commission. We are not part of the executive department. In fact, it is our mandate and we are supposed to be the watchdog of human rights violations of the government.”
“We are being accused of whitewashing the role of the AFP. But it is the first time that the CHR is saying in black and white that the military is involved in these atrocities,” Cadiz said, referring to the report that the CHR will likely issue in the next two weeks.
“In previous years, they were saying that the CHR is equivocate in denouncing the acts of the military, but that is how it came out in our public inquiry.”
Cadiz said that while they are expecting that both sides “will not be happy,” but the CHR doesn’t expect that their “reactions will be very bad.”
“The Palace is asking us why are we coming up with statements that involves the AFP in these atrocities, or that the AFP is recruiting,” Cadiz said.
“When we issued that statement, these were the things that came out from the public inquiry for all the violations, so we cannot understand why they are saying that this is a whitewash?”
Cadiz added that the CHR received word from the UN High Commission for Refugees in the Philippines, “congratulating us for unbiased statements in the light of these atrocities.”
“Immediately after making our stand on Monday, our friends from the UNHCR, Bernard Kerblat made a statement congratulating us for our unbiased move.”
While Cadiz disproved the military’s claims that they weren’t involved in the supposed round-up of paramilitary groups in Mindanao, he also acknowledged the AFP’s move to clean-up their ranks following the various lumad attacks.
“The military, they are saying that they have nothing to do with it, but if you look closely, where are the rifles, the guns coming from? They cannot also wash their hands. We’re not living in past when Armalites grew on trees,” Cadiz said.
“We think that the AFP realized that they cannot deny that they’re recruiting, however they issued a statement that it is not their policy to commit crimes as part of their insurgency war. It’s not just murmurs.”
A highly-placed source said that some AFP soldiers were relieved from their posts and placed under courts martial after being directly involved in some incidents involving lumad, but Cadiz declined to confirm or deny the claim.
“We’ve sent them a letter asking for the status of these proceedings,” Cadiz said.
Cadiz also questioned the attempts of left-leaning to divert the CHR’s attention by focusing only on the military’s involvement without condemning the inhumane acts of the NPA.
“I think it is also unfair, and I think that is what the leftist groups are mad about, that we are also condemning the atrocities of the left. We are calling on violations on both sides,” he said.
Cadiz recounted the CHR’s own hearings on the issue of lumad killings in Davao where left-leaning civil society organizations refused to cooperate in the proceedings.
The CHR called on both the AFP and NPA to let lumad leaders engage in dialogues among themselves without their interference.
“The track being pursued by the CHR is to have these datus to talk without the military, the NPA, the civil support groups. The leaders being handled by Karapatan were reluctant. Even without the CHR in the talks, they are still reluctant. But that’s the process that we are promoting, talk among themselves, heal the division. Because these lumad have their own processes,” Cadiz said.
Cadiz cited the case of the Banwaons in Agusan del Sur who are also engaged in a tribal strife, saying that after “they’ve undergone the same process, the issues were finally resolved… We cannot promote peace if they don’t want to dialogue.”