of the Philippines the criminal justice system is - Article 2

In his letter, Chief Superintendent Mendoza
implies that communist rebels have perpetrated
most of the killings. His opinions were reflected
in the 18 October 2006 letter from the Secretary
of the Department of Justice, Raul Gonzalez, who
while acknowledging that “suspicions alone do not
give the police authorities the green light to make
arrests”,
We strongly deny, as evidence in the possession of the
authorities will support this, that such killings are
government-inspired. [The] majority of these killings
were done by elements of Communists, the NPA, who
pass themselves off as peasants but who are in practice
and in reality, no more than bandits.
While Secretary Gonzalez claims that the
killings are not government-inspired, public
statements by military officials and the consistent
pattern of police and official inaction towards
killings, particularly those that have followed
labelling of individuals or groups, speaks to the
opposite. For instance, retired Major General
Jovito Palparan Jr., former head of the 7th Infantry
Division, was quoted by the Philippine Inquirer on
22 August 2006 as saying that,
We are encouraging people to fight this problem. If
the people, who have been victimized by insurgents,
decide to take it upon themselves to get even with the
enemy, that is their individual responsibility. They
know who were responsible for these killings before
we came in. I have encouraged the people to take the
law into their own hands.
“
Despite the weight of national and
international opinion against him, Palparan was
not sanctioned for making such statements,
instead enjoying support from government
officials, including President Gloria Macapagal-
Arroyo, who had lauded him for his antiinsurgency
campaign during her State of the
Nation Address in July 2006.
In October Secretary Gonzalez even offered Major General
Palparan a consultancy with his department. When challenged
about the alleged gross abuses of human rights committed by
Palparan and his subordinates, Gonzalez replied that these have
“not yet been proven”. Presumably with his oversight of the
“justice” department they are unlikely to be.
However, military and official denials of responsibility have
become irrelevant since the findings of the presidentiallyappointed
Melo Commission—announced at the end of January
2007—that the killings are linked to the armed forces and that
the police and justice department had failed to address them
effectively (see appendix II). On Palparan specifically the
commission noted that:
I have encouraged the
people to take the
law into their
own hands
”
article 2 • February 2007 Vol. 6, No. 1 21
PHOTO: REUTERS
—Major General
Jovito Palparan Jr.