Police problem

THE PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) claims it can’t arrest the  remaining 97 accused in the Ampatuan Massacre of November 23, 2009 who’re still at large, 196 being the number of the accused in that atrocity, of which only 99 are in custody. (Only 72 had been arraigned as of June, which leaves 27 yet to undergo the process. Fifty-five have filed petitions for bail.)

PNP spokespersons were reacting to the killing of a number of individuals, at least three of whom were potential prosecution witnesses—the latest to be killed  was a driver whose vehicle was used to transport some of the killers—who could  have testified on who planned  and implemented  the deed over two and half years ago that killed 58 men and women, 32 of them journalists and media workers.

The PNP said Mindanao, where the fugitives are presumed to be in hiding, is just too big a place for the police to cover. In addition,  said the PNP, these fugitives are also under the protection of their clans—some of which, one might add, are politically powerful and who have police officers and even entire police units in their pockets. The police did not mention this factor in the difficulties the PNP is having in apprehending the remaining suspects in the Massacre. Neither has any police spokesperson mentioned that among the suspects and accused in the Massacre are several police officers.

For her part, Secretary of Justice Leila de Lima, when asked why potential prosecution witnesses are being killed, said that her department cannot keep track of all of them, since only a few are in the government’s Witness Protection Program. She didn’t mention it either. But at least one of the slain witnesses, a Muslim, had refused to be part of the program, and chose to return to Mindanao instead, because he didn’t think the Christians charged with the security of the Program could protect him.

Both explanations seem reasonable, but both miss the point. These micro-difficulties must be seen in the context of the larger picture, at the core of which reigns the culture of impunity. The Ampatuan Massacre was neither a single event nor an aberration in a situation that was otherwise sane, in which killings were rare and killers were routinely apprehended, tried, and punished.

It was and still is the exact opposite. Prior to the Massacre, since 1986 81 journalists and media workers had been killed, of which only ten cases had been resolved only in the sense that the killers had been convicted; no masterminds had even been tried. Eight journalists have since been killed after the massacre. And since 2001, over a thousand political activists, church people, human rights workers, lawyers, even local officials and judges, had been killed, often with the involvement of police and military personnel. Abductions, enforced disappearances, and torture have also been reported by both Philippine- as well as foreign-based human rights watch groups.

The culture of impunity—the  exemption from punishment of the perpetrators of the killings, whether of journalists or of  individuals from other sectors of Philippine society—is what encourages further killings. Everything else is mere detail, the specific problems of identifying, keeping track of, and protecting witnesses could be solved if the fundamental reasons why the killings continue were at the same time addressed.

The persistence of the culture of impunity is based on the reality of collusion between the killers, the police, and the paramilitaries, which has transformed these government bodies into private entities in the service of, in some cases, local government officials who’re actually serving their own private interests. While Mindanao is indeed a big place, the advantage that it offers the killers of journalists could be offset by police officers who’re not beholden to local interests and therefore able to do their jobs. Meanwhile, a demonstration of police professionalism would also go a long way towards minimizing the mutual suspicion between Muslims and Christians, which was at least a factor in the killing of one of the prosecution witnesses last February.

Police and military collusion with the killers of journalists and the masterminds behind them—in some cases their even serving as assassins, as in 2003 Edgar Damalerio killing in Pagadian city—is the mother factor in the persistence of impunity. The reality of that collusion has weakened the justice system, and  has been for decades a clear indication of the need to reform the police and the military beyond merely compelling them to attend human rights seminars which anyway most of them are determined to forget once they’re concluded. As he enters the third of his six-year year term, President Benigno S. Aquino III can begin the process by a declaration, most notable in his State of the Nation Address, that police and military involvement in human rights violations, but specifically in the killing of anyone, whether journalist or ordinary citizen, must end, and violators dismissed from the service.