UN Human Rights Committee finds the Arroyo government guilty of human rights violations

More than two years after the families of two murdered human rights activists filed a complaint against the Philippine government, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled the Arroyo government is guilty of violating the activists' right to life, and was negligent in providing remedy after they were slain.

Eden Marcellana, photo courtesy Karapatan

On April 21, 2003, human rights workers Eden Marcellana and Eddie Gumanoy were salvaged* under the watch of Arroyo's pet General Jovito Palparan, well known in the Philippines as "The Butcher of Mindoro" because of the appalling number of activists murdered in areas under his command.

Despite eyewitnesses testimony that the two activists were kidnapped by former rebels now working with the military, the Department of Justice dismissed a complaint filed by the activists' families. More than 5 years later, the case in the Philippines has not progressed.

Unfortunately, this new UN decision won't result in any disciplinary action against the Arroyo government -- it simply requires that the Philippine state provides "effective remedy." (In other words, initiate a criminal investigation, which it so spectacularly failed to do in the first place.)

Given that not a single perpetrator of a single extrajudicial killing has been held accountable for murder since the Marcos era, I can't say I feel terribly hopeful. And the last major UN tongue-lashing to Arroyo -- delivered by special rapporteur Phillip Alston -- didn't really solve anything.

But still, anything that exposes and embarrasses Arroyo on the international stage is a positive step, and activists hope this ruling may strengthen the case for Arroyo's impeachment.

Now if the US would just stop propping up her government...

*Salvage: Filipino slang for the rather common practice of murdering activists and leaving their shattered bodies to be found by the side of the road. A close relative of 'disappeared,' but with its own unique horrors.

I can't find a copy of the UNHCR decision online, so I've uploaded them as jpgs. Click on the thumbnails to view full size images. The decision is well worth reading for a detailed summary of the murders, and an overview of the ineffectiveness of the judicial system in the Philippines. It's worth noting, also, that while the government challenges whether this case was legitimatly brought in front of the UN, there's no refutation of the actual accounting of events.
I created a pdf of the document as well, which I'm happy to forward to anyone who's interested.

Autumn in Northern California

Censorship in the Mission

This mural, on 24th St in San Francisco's Mission district, is one I've often noticed and liked. Painted by the group Homey (Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth) it unfolds across 117 feet of concrete, showing people challenging the barriers --cultural, societal and physical -- that oppress and divide them. But I never really knew anything about its history.
Today, I learned the panel above originally depicted these figures bursting a Palestine-shaped hole through the wall, and that the woman on the bottom was first painted with her kuffiyeh covering her face.

When the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council and the local office of the Anti-Defamation League caught wind of it, they pressed the San Francisco Arts Commission to have the mural changed, and managed to suspend the community beautification grant that funded the project until Homey agreed to compromise on their design.

What does it say when nice, liberal San Francisco is comfortable with public art and public discourse that challenges the legitimacy of the wall on the US-Mexican border, but censors any similar challenges to the wall between Israel and Palestine?



[In other news, right after I started typing this, a car window got smashed right below my bedroom window. My neighbors ran the guy off, but this is at least the second time this week. The neighborhood has been crazy lately]

Pumpkin Festival

I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival this afternoon. It was a nice escape from the daily routine, but the whole affair had an "end of the Roman Empire" vibe I found a little hard to shake.

Scenes from the Pumpkin Pie eating contest.

Human bone found in Bataan Camp

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

Human bone in Bataan camp
by Nikko Dizon
LIMAY, BATAAN—Braving rains, a fact-finding team Tuesday dug up a yellow rubber slipper, a laced shirt and burned fragments of what they suspected was a human bone in an area where a former detainee said he saw people being tortured by soldiers. [more]

and more

and more

I don't even know what to say. So I'll quote UP Professor Roland Simbulan, from an interview I did in Summer 2007:

“There were human rights abuses before. Illegal arrests, torture, detention. But what is different now under Arroyo is the extent of killings of political activists. In fact, there’s an ugly joke going around that they don’t anymore have to feed them. Because during the Marcos time, and Ramos and other administrations, they would arrest an activist, or torture him at the most. But at least they were alive, they kept them in detention later to be released. But now, they’re not arresting them anymore. They just kill them. There’s not even a formal charge against them. They just abduct them, and perhaps they would try to extract as much information from them, and then they kill them. Some of their bodies or corpses are not even found. So that’s the difference, the gravity or the volume of people who are being killed. It’s very alarming."

It's not completely impossible this is some sort of elaborate hoax. Not completely.
And I'd very much like to think so, and that Karen Empeño and Manuel Merino are still safe and alive somewhere in the mountains.
But it doesn't seem likely. By the most ridiculously conservative numbers, there have been at least 200 extrajudicial executions since Arroyo came to power. By the greatest estimate, over 1000. And I personally know multiple people who have been kidnapped by paramilitaries, taken to camps in isolated areas and subjected to brutal torture.
So there's no real doubt in my mind that Manalo is telling the truth. I just hope that this time, this one time, some of the blood sticks on somebody's hands.

Crew slideshow

My multimedia slideshow on the Jack London Aquatic Center's crew team for Oakland youth is not up at OaklandNorth.net.

More to come...

VP Debate collage

Multi-media collage I built (using other people's photos and reporting -- it was a mostly successful collaborative excercise). It doesn't fit too well in this column, so click on the box at the lower right (with the arrows) to view full screen.

Vuvox is my new favorite toy.

Rice crisis revisited

UPDATE: You can view a slideshow of the pictures below. But you'll still have to actually visit the set to read the text.

Back in June, when I first started taking pictures of the rice crisis in Mindanao, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with them. Since, for the moment, the answer seems to have been "nothing" I thought I'd at least put them all up publicly (Some of the pictures, and most of the text haven't been up before).
The full set is now up here
There's quite a bit of explanatory text along with the photos. One of these days, I do still intend to put this all together, but for now time seems hard to come by.

Lazy Sunday

After days spent immersed in the arcane minutiae of municipal bond markets, it was nice to take a short day assignment that basically involved hanging out with kids in a neighborhood park.

(Of course, I do still have to write the bond piece.)

Obama-McCain debate

I went down to the corner store to watch the presidential candidates debate. It definitely gives some interesting perspective to watch McCain and Obama talk about Wall Street bailouts, corporate taxes and ethanol subsidies while a middle-aged woman tries (and succeeds) to cajole the clerk into extending her line of credit so she can buy some cheese and crackers for dinner.

File this under "apologizing for not posting more."

I've recovered from being ill, but I'm still scrambling to get caught up on work.  (I'm running around so much I've started referring to my apartment as my "alleged home.")

Still from an audio slideshow about Jack London Aquatic Center's crew team for Oakland girls.

I'm working on a JSchool project to launch a community news site for North Oakland, which is sucking up a lot of my energy right now. When we get the site launched, I'll start linking to articles, and some of my multimedia pieces about Oakland will start seeing the light of day.

In the meantime, I'll post when I can, and even if I'm not blogging, I do upload photos to flickr pretty frequently.

I've been horrendously sick the past several days. I was more or less bedridden beginning Friday, and though I'm definitely on the mend -- and today have been able to go about most of my business -- I'm still feeling a bit shaky.
I got a whole battery of blood-tests done to see if I carried something exciting back from the tropics. I'm still awaiting the final word as to whether this was a generic- or name-brand- illness, but in the meantime, I'm just grateful I got over it so quickly, and I have a new (and inevitably fleeting) appreciation for every moment absent of excruciating pain.

Adventure Tsinelas

After 6 months, 6 countries, 2 conflict zones, 1 hand restitching, and who knows how many miles walked and rivers forded, I decided it was time for a new pair of sandals.

I'm finding myself a bit sentimental though. The old pair and I have been through a lot together -- from the floods of Manila to dirt-track crossings between Shan State and China -- and despite their girlish exterior, they've always served so well that I dubbed them the "adventure sandals."

I thought they deserved some kind of memorial. Goodbye Tsinelas. Goodbye Asia. Hello grad school, starting again tomorrow...

Portrait from Agdao Market

This is a woman named Lita Midrano, who I spoke to this June, on the day rice prices broke 50 pesos per kilo in Mindanao. Midrano complained the subsidized rice provided by the National Food Authority for p18.50 a kilo was very poor quality, but she still waited in line for hours, because she couldn't afford not to.

She was angry, and along with other mothers and grandmothers in line -- women old enough to have lived through decades of war in Mindanao -- she started talking, half joking and half serious about rioting and revolution. How high, I asked, would the price have to get?

“With rice a reaching 50 pesos per kilo, we’re already getting very angry,” she told me. "But before getting angry and starting a war, we have to eat. And so we wait in line.”

Travel

Back to California, after a long, parched, uncomfortable but uneventful flight. I'm worn out, but happy to be back in my room, watching desperate flight of the last (I hope) of the ants that had taken up residence in my computer.

Notes from Manila:

It's been a brilliant exit from the Philippines.
Absolutely torrential rains, and a completely flooded out street. (On the plus side, you know who your real friends are when you kinda really need someone to go out into the flood and find a taxi for you so you don't have to take your bags to the corner in the rain).
I'm flying Philippine Airlines, which has its very own international terminal. Meaning, no mitigating factors for the PAL experience. Over an hour wait to check in. Nowhere to get a magazine apart from the Christian Bookazine Corp. , and you can't even buy a bottle of water past security to take on the flight.
And then the power goes off. They've got some kind of generator, but it's still incredibly dim, and apparantly bathrooms are not a priority area. Best of all, the fancy, "hi-tech" sensor-controlled toilets and faucets do not function, and have no manual back-up (except for the charming attendent who ran out to get dippers full of water).
The power's come back, hence the wifi. But, ach, it's like packing into three hours all the things I hate, but will invariably feel slightly nostalgic for, about the Philippines.
Next stop, San Francisco.
[editors note: true to form, the touted free wifi does not actually work. So this won't actually go up until California]

It's been a fairly grim week. So hot I miss the rain. 2 journalists have been shot, one fatally. The Dengue fever season is in force, and it's seems to have even reached into my home -- the friend who lives in the next room over has been prostrate this week, with all the symptoms of dengue, having to go to the hospital for repeated blood tests. The only consolation is knowing that if he had contracted one of the really dangerous strains, he'd already be dead. Instead, the worst seems to have passed, but it's frightening, and not least because I live in the same conditions, getting bitten by the same mosquitos.

This is not to say I'm living in a state of misery. I get out, even have the occasional productive day, but I've been feeling a little, shall we say, distracted...

Monsoon Blues

View from my roof yesterday

It can be very, very difficult to get anything done when leaving the house involves wading.

So, as promised I put up more photos from the SONA counter-rally. But I'm feeling thin on thoughts, or at least coherent ones.

A full-text of Arroyo's speech can be found here. There's some debate about whether or not she actually believes the rosy statistics she quotes. I'll leave that to the psychoanalysts.

I'd love to see an in-depth analysis of which subjects she chooses to speak about in Tagalog, and which in English. She seems to confine the folksiest parts, about her great concern for various types of poor people to Tagalog, while using English to talk about policy.

As far as the protests, it's hard to know what to say. Clearly, people are angry. But not angry enough to stand together. The rally was actually composed of two parts: an RA section and an RJ section, with a fence and a police line between them.

(For those unfamiliar with the byzantine twists and turns of the history of the Philippine left, I'd reccomend Alecks Pabico's article "The Great Left Divide" . But to make a long story short, RA 's are those who ReAffirm Marxist-Leninist(Stalinist)-Maoist principles as defined by the Communist Party of the Philippines -- including protracted people's war --and RJs are those who ReJected them in favor of a wide variety of political stances ranging from orthodox Leninism, Trotskyism, Social Democracy, etc. This debate split the left in 1992, and to put it mildly, the two factions don't get along with each other.)

So far as I could tell, there was no conflict between the two groups yesterday, and it was possible to move from one section to another, but there were two competing speakers on two competing stages, talking about the same issues but each with their own constellation of supporters and party flags and banners around them.
It can be very hard to see any way forward.

SONA

While President Arroyo gave her annual State of the Nation Address, and estimated 13,000 protesters held a march and counter-rally, denouncing low wages, the risingcost of living, and denouncing Arroyo's record on human rights and civil liberties.

Additional images here, and more photos and thoughts tomorrow.

Economic crisis keeping kids out of school

The Philippine government just released its report on school attendance for 2006-2007, revealing that 17% of primary-school-aged children -- which is to say 2.2 million of them -- are not in school.

In 1999-2000, before current President Arroyo, the corresponding number was 3%.

Numbers have plummeted under Arroyo, as has real per-capita spending on education, making the Philippines one of the lowest spenders in the world.

Unfortunately, the numbers are likely to be even worse for the current year, as the economic situation worsens. Public education is not free here -- families are responsible for school fees, uniforms and school supplies -- and registration season corresponded with the height of the rice crisis, forcing many families to choose between feeding their children or putting them in school.



Here,* school teachers in Carupay, Zamboanga del Norte, explain the situation in their own school, and the difficulties facing even children whose families manage to pay the fees.

President Arroyo, putting her Phd in economics to good use, recently conceded that the rising costs of food and energy may be keeping kids out of school.

Her solution? Asking schools not to require uniforms.

Read this great (as usual) PCIJ piece for links to the report and more information...

*some technical issues in the middle due to software problems. I'll correct them if I can solve the original issue...