Support the peace talks between the GRP and the NDFP

What's the current status of the peace talks? The answer will depend on whom is asked. It's a very good development that there is continued interest in the talks -- despite the Macapagal-Arroyo government's declarations that there is no more need to talk kasi wala namang pag-uusapan.

In the wake of the military's admission that it has failed (and how) to meet its target of moving sufficiently closer to putting an end to the insurgency, dapat tuunan na muli ng pansin ang kasalukuyang kalagayan ng usapang pangkapayapaan. Contrary to cynical beliefs that the peace talks count for nothing, they actually imply a lot for human rights and the country's prospects for peace.

The formal meetings of the negotiating panels of the Government of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP are postponed, but the NDFP maintains that the peace negotiations are ongoing. The NDFP affirms that all agreements signed with the GRP remain binding and in effect. The Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) which was established in February 14, 2004 on the strength of the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) between the two parties back in 1998 continues to function. The same goes for the Reciprocal Working Committees (RWCs) on human rights and international humanitarian law, and on social and economic affairs.
 Prior to the break in the formal meetings, there have been several developments that compelled the NDFP to charge the GRP of negotiating in bad faith.

 In July 7, 2004, upon learning that the entire Marcos ill-gotten wealth held in escrow by the Philippine National Bank had been transferred to the GRP treasury the previous March, the NDFP strongly criticized and opposed the move. This was on the grounds that a significant portion of the amount was supposed to be earmarked for the indemnification of the human rights victims of the dictatorship, and that this was already agreed upon in the Oslo I and II joint statements.

The NDFP also raised the issue of the release of the political prisoners, the worsening and increasing number of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, and the GRP’s failure to resolve the issue of the ‘terrorist' listing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), New People’s Army (NPA) and the NDFP Chief Political Consultant, Prof. Jose Ma. Sison. The NDFP considers these issues as prejudicial questions that should be settled before formal negotiations can resume.

 To further compound complications, the US State Department released a new list of foreign terrorist organizations and individuals on August 10, 2004. The list still included the CPP, NPA and Prof. Sison. These two events prompted the NDFP negotiating panel to postpone the formal talks that should have taken place on August 24. The postponement was a move to give the GRP time to comply with its obligations in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration, the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), CARHRIHL and Oslo Joint Statements I and II.

 Instead of using the period of postponement to address the prejudicial questions raised by the NDFP, the GRP on December 18, 2004 formally suspended the formal talks in the negotiations. On August 4 the following year, it also unilaterally suspended the JASIG. The so-called JASIG suspension essentially put the peace negotiations in limbo. The NDFP maintains that the JASIG remains valid and binding, and that the peace negotiations are ongoing because neither of the negotiating parties has terminated the JASIG.

 For its part, the NDFP has done its best to break the impasse and to ensure that the peace talks continue. The NDFP has also submitted proposals for this purpose, among them are the paper titled Responding to Prejudicial Questions, Accelerating Peace Negotiations through Informal Meetings of Special Representatives of the Principals (June 2005); the 10-point Concise Agreement for an Immediate Ceasefire (August 27, 2005); and the NDFP Package of Proposals (November 2005).

Instead of meeting the efforts of the NDFP halfway, the GRP virtually suspended the peace negotiations when, in February 2006, it filed rebellion charges against Prof. Sison, NDFP Panel Chairman Luis Jalandoni; NDFP Panel members Fidel Agcaoili and Juliet Sison; NDFP Panel consultants Vicente Ladlad, Rafael Baylosis, and Randall Echanis, among others. The GRP’s Department of Justice has also attacked the integrity of the Joint Secretariat by identifying its office as the address of the individuals it charged with rebellion.

 Prof. Sison has said that there are clear signs that indicate the GRP’s lack of interest in the peace negotiations. He cited the extrajudicial killings, abductions, torture, forced displacement of millions of people and other human rights violations by the GRP military, police and death squads.

 In the meantime, there have been numerous public declarations by key cabinet officials such as Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales and AFP chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon taunting the NDFP to surrender and yield to a three-year ceasefire. This is a clear violation of the Hague Joint Declaration wherein it was agreed that ceasefires will be the fourth and last substantive agenda in the peace negotiations.

 The NDFP also denounces how the GRP continues to spread the lie that the NDFP is demanding that the former compel the United States and other foreign governments remove the CPP, the NPA and Prof. Sison from the terrorist list. There is no truth to this accusation. All the NDFP is seeking is, at the minimum, both parties make a joint statement against the terrorist listing of the aforementioned.

 As for recent political developments, the NDFP has taken a strong stand opposing and condemning the anti-terrorism law.

 On February 8 this year, Congress voted 16-2 to approve the Human Security Act, more commonly known as the anti-terrorism law. The following day, February 9, the congressional bicameral committee adapted the senate’s version in toto. By March 6, 2007, the anti-terrorism bill was signed into law.

 Advocates of the anti-terror law – mostly from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the National Security Council (NSC) and the Department of National Defense (DND) – justify it as a means to effectively fight against the scourge of terrorism. Analyzed within the context of the intensifying attacks of the government against members of the political opposition including the legal and democratic protest movement and the progressive party-lists, however, it is impossible not to see through the more insidious motives. Prior to the ATA’s implementation on July 15, 2007, human rights group KARAPATAN has documented 866 acts of extrajudicial killings and 200 enforced disappearances. These shocking numbers are feared to increase as the ATA gains ground and the law-enforcement agencies implement it.

 The ant-terror law’s provisions on the prosecution of organizations opposing the government also puts legal people’s organizations and their civilian members in danger. The GRP has repeatedly charged a number of legitimate people’s organizations as fronts for the CPP-NPA, and this too can be used against the NDFP and to the detriment of the peace talks.

 In the meantime, the anti-terror law is also in open violation of the CARHRIHL, wherein it is stated that essentially, the GRP shall not invoke repressive laws, decrees and orders to circumvent or contravene the provisions of the agreement.

 Currently the NDFP-Monitoring Committee (MC) is busy addressing the matter of the Macapagal-Arroyo government’s escalating underhanded attacks against the leadership of the NDFP, which included the arrest of NDFP chief political consultant Prof. Jose Ma. Sison.

Last August 28, the Dutch police raided the office of the NDFP in The Netherlands, as well as the houses of Luis Jalandoni and NDFP Panel member Coni Ledesma; Juliet de Lima; Danilo Borjal, Political Consultant; Ruth de Leon, Head Panel Secretariat; and Aldo Gonzalez and Joselito Baleva, volunteers in the NDFP International Information Office. They were brusquely interrogated and forbidden from moving around their homes while the rest of the premises were being ransacked. Ms. Ledesma was even taken to the police station for questioning.

All computers, laptops, external disks, USB sticks, CDs, diskettes, cameras and MP3s players were seized, along with voluminous documents and papers including Mr. Jalandoni’s complete files on the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations from 1986 to the end of 2004.

In the meantime, the room that Mr. Agcaoili uses whenever he is in The Netherlands was also broken into, ransacked, and its contents pillaged. Included in the confiscated documents were the complete set of complaint forms submitted to the JMC against the NDFP and the GRP, as well as written communications between the NDFP-MC and the NDFP Joint Secretariat (JS), and documents of the NDFP-MC. A box of diskettes and CDs containing documents pertaining to the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and the work of the JMC were also taken.

It goes without saying that the actions of the Dutch police have greatly disrupted the operations of the NDFP-MC, and have caused great inconvenience in our work, not to mention compromising efforts to secure justice for the thousands of human rights victims who have placed their trust in the mechanism of the NDFP-MC for the redress of their grievances.

All the seized digital files -- computers, laptops, external disks, diskettes, USB sticks, CDs, cameras and MP3s -- documents and papers have no connection whatsoever to the charge against Prof. Sison. Sison himself was released last September 13 after the Dutch District Court in the Hague declared that there was no sufficient and credible evidence connecting him to the alleged murders in the Philippines. It is the NDFP’s stand that the Dutch prosecutor’s office went on a fishing expedition when it authorized the raids of the NDFP office and the houses of the NDFP’s staff and volunteers.

 The searches and confiscations were conducted without the residents being allowed to see the actual operations because they were made to stay in one place. None of the police showed any valid warrants. One warrant did not even have a date. None contained any specifications on what the police should look for. When they carted off their loot, the police didn’t give a list of what they confiscated to the residents to make sure that no materials would be planted or manufactured afterwards and then attributed to the residents. These actions of the police violated the residents’ fundamental rights to privacy, due process and against self-incrimination which are universally recognized and accepted.

 To get directly to an urgent point, the raid of the NDFP office and the houses of the staff and more importantly, the arrest of Prof. Sison have severe implications on the peace talks and all other efforts to bring about a just and lasting peace in the Philippines. There was cold-blooded malice in the way the raid was conducted and how Prof. Sison was arrested and consequently denied his right to counsel.

 In the meantime, the campaign of political persecution against Prof. Sison has not ceased. He spent almost three weeks in solitary detention in the National Penitentiary in Scheveningen in the Hague before he was released on September 13 on trumped-up charges of orchestrating assassinations. The Dutch Justice Ministry court that heard his case, however, declared that there was no sufficient evidence to connect him to murders committed in the Philippines.

Despite this, the Dutch prosecutors have appealed to the Court of Appeals that Prof. Sison be placed back in detention.

 Prof. Sison’s legal counsels appealed this decision last September 26 on the grounds that the prosecutors failed to present any new evidence, and that the prosecutors’ efforts to strengthen an otherwise very weak case are futile.

It should be noted that the Supreme Court of the Philippines itself in a landmark decision released on July 2, 2007 declared Prof. Sison innocent of rebellion charges the same way that it said that the progressive party-list lawmakers dubbed the Batasan 6 were not guilty of the same accusations.

 The NDFP has already filed charges against the GRP for the enforced disappearance of NDFP Consultants and members. NDFP staff member Federico Intise and his wife Nelly were abducted in General Santos City on October 26, 2006. NDFP consultant Cesar Batralo was taken in San Mateo, Rizal on December 21, 2006. Another NDFP consultant, Leo Velaso, was abducted in Cagayan de Oro City on February 19, 2007.

 NDFP Panel Chairman Luis Jalandoni filed the formal complaints in August 2007 before the United Nations Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances in Geneva and the complaints are against Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as commander in chief of the AFP. In April 2007, the NDFP also filed complaints against the GRP in the same United Nations body for the involuntary disappearances of NDFP consultant Rogelio Calubad and his son Gabriel, and NDFP staff member Leopoldo Ancheta. The Calubads were abducted on June 17, 2006 in Calauag, Quezon province, and Acheta on June 24 in Guiguinto, Bulacan.

 All of these most lamentable incidents of abductions, extrajudicial killings and the filing of false charges constitute serious attacks on the integrity of the peace negotiations. The killings remain unsolved as the Macapagal-Arroyo government refuses to scrap the military operation Oplan Bantay Laya. No leads are forthcoming regarding the abducted activists including the missing NDFP consultants. While it is true that Prof. Sison has already been released, the trumped-up charges against him have not been dismissed, and the Macapagal-Arroyo government continues its campaign of political persecution against him and the NDFP. What all this implies for the peace negotiations should be discussed in detail because they are grave and potentially disastrous for the peace process.

 At the onset, the restoration of the files and documents of the NDFP is an immediate concern and whatever action that can be done to address will go a long way in clearing the clouded atmosphere that now characterizes the peace negotiations between the GRP and the NDFP.

 There is much insight to be gained from studying the publications that have been published and released by the NDFP through the NDFP-MC in the JMC. The views and stands of the NDFP are all explained at length and in depth in these publications, including Book 7 (The NDFP’s Defense of the Rights of the Filipino Child), Book 8 (The GRP-NDFP Peace Negotiations: Major Written Agreements and Outstanding Issues), and Book 9 (A Comparative Study of Twenty-Three Cases of Extrajudicial Killings Filed Against the GRP that the Macapagal-Arroyo Regime is Attributing to the NDFP).

 There are also the various publications, reports and statements issued by the Citizens’ Council on Truth and Accountability, Amnesty International, Asian Human Rights Council, various chambers of Commerce, Permanent People’s Tribunal, and the Human Rights Watch.

From reading these documents, you may be able to better understand and trace the course that civil society can take in helping to push the peace process forward.

It would also be most productive  to support other civil society initiatives which have been reported in various fact-finding mission reports on the killings, abductions, and other violations of the rights of activists, lawyers, journalists, church people and others. In the wake of the discussions, concerned sectors can determine the recommendations they can make, hopefully in support of the peace process and all other efforts to uphold human rights in the the Philippines.

All freedom-loving Filipinos are being called upon to support calls to put an end to the extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights violations. This means supporting and even participating in independent and credible investigations in accordance with the guidelines laid down by Amnesty International and other groups.

 People’s organizations, members of the media, Church formations and human rights advocates should push for the holding of joint investigations by the GRP and the NDFP, whether within or outside the frame of the JMC. The GRP must also be compelled by public pressure to abide by all existing agreements and resolve the prejudicial questions, and to convene the JMC so it can do its work as provided for in the CARHRIHL and the Operational Guidelines for the Work of the JMC.

The journey towards peace starts with a single step. Join the many others who have begun to pave the way and support the peace negotiations. #