Human Rights and State Security: Indonesia and the Philippines

8. The Philippines 1999–2008: Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Violations

8 The Philippines 1999–2008: Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights Violations In , major international human rights organizations raised alarm over the human rights situation in the Philippines. Since , depending on who is counting, between  and  individuals, many of them human rights activists, trade unionists, and members of left-oriented political parties , have been extralegally executed (Amnesty International ; Human Rights Defenders ). In September , the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, castigated the Philippine military as being in a state of denial concerning the extralegal executions . He demanded swift action against military perpetrators and an end to a practice of legal impunity (United Nations General Assembly ). In an apparently separate development, the Philippine military, with American assistance, has waged an all-out war against terrorism in the Muslim-dominated south, leading to huge numbers of people becoming internal refugees. The National Disaster Council and the International Displacement Monitoring Center of the Philippines recorded approximately , internal refugees due to military campaigns in  and another , refugees in October . In that month, an effort was made to develop a memorandum of agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamic movement that has been struggling for the self-determination of southern provinces since the s, but the effort failed when the Philippine Supreme Court intervened , leading to immediate violence (Amnesty International : ). 232 Chapter 8 For the first time since the early s, the Philippines and its government under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and newly elected President Benigno Aquino are perceptibly back on an international public agenda. In , Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International mobilized against extant human rights violations in the Philippines. The International Crisis Group has targeted the Philippines for its handling of the conflict in the Philippines’ Muslim-dominated south. These two spotlighted points prepare us for the task ahead in this chapter. In previous chapters, I have focused on the interaction between human rights organizations and governments that are accused of human rights violations. My focus is how these governments effectively use justifications and excuses to engage their critics in a dialogue over their practice, to persuade audiences that their action is necessary, and to try to block advocacy. The last few chapters have thus focused on ex post facto situations in which the governments had already made the major decisions about state security and the human rights organizations challenged their definition of the situation. In this chapter , I describe the pathway that leads to human rights violations by focusing on the Philippine government’s role in the American-led global war on terror. In doing so, I provide an answer to the question I posed in Chapters One and Two. Why do governments routinely violate the most basic human rights? In this explanation, the two seemingly unrelated events described above play a key role. I show how the Philippine government skillfully connected these apparently unrelated events in a domestic discourse on the war on terror . By doing so, the government not only secured important external financial and moral support from the American and European governments to address two long-standing domestic insurgencies. It also blocked domestic opposition groups that could have served as important bulwarks against and watchdogs over the human rights violations that followed. Thus, in this chapter, I look in particular at how a pattern of human rights violations could develop since  and how this pattern became possible through the distinct framing strategies of the Philippine government and the spectacular events that confirmed its account. I also show how the counterstrategies of opposition groups in the Philippines were not sufficient to challenge the Philippine administration under President Joseph Estrada (–) and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (–). The first argument is that international normative influences helped the Philippine governments under President Joseph Estrada and Gloria Philippines 1999–2008 233 Macapagal-Arroyo to develop a counter-terror policy that made military operations against two long-standing domestic insurgencies, MILF and the National People’s Army (NPA) possible with American assistance. More generally , the Phillipine case illustrates how some governments have utilized the normative shift constituted by the international war on terror to seek state security from long-standing armed insurgencies, even as these armed challenges to state security—in the form of threats to the territorial integrity of the state, its legitimate authority and its monopoly to violence to garner external support. They seek, and receive, international legitimization for their action. The...