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ONCE
defined simply as exemption from punishment, since the
Cold War era impunity has taken on a primarily political
meaning. It has come to refer to the immunity from
prosecution of the worst state violators of human
rights, whether in Latin America, Africa or Asia, as
well as Europe and the United States.
The
killing of political activists and journalists continues
because of the culture of impunity in the
Philippines,
where, despite the existence of appropriate laws, only a
very few killers of journalists and none so far of
activists have been prosecuted.
So
pervasive has it become that impunity is now described
as a way of doing things that has not only become
routine, but has also gained acceptability—at least
among the most fanatical enemies of citizen protest and
enterprise journalism.
The
killing of noncombatants in Vietnam through the Central
Intelligence Agency’s Operation Phoenix (1967-1969) has
been explained away and even justified in the name of
anticommunist necessity by Right-wing US politicians.
Operation Phoenix has recently recaptured media
attention as documents on the US conduct of the Vietnam
War (1954-1975) are declassified, and its horrors
discovered.
The
US-conceived and assisted Operation Condor, which in
several Latin American countries sanctioned the arrest,
abduction, torture and assassination of persons for
their political beliefs rather than for committing
illegal acts, has similarly been justified as necessary
to protect Latin American societies, among them Chile,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia etc., from “subversion,”
although the real aim was to assure continuing
multinational access to the resources of those
countries.
Operation Condor went so far as to assassinate former
government officials, oppositionists, leftists and
activists who had fled persecution in their home
countries and taken up residence in
Europe and even the
United
States. In that sense it globalized state terror, doing
for capitalism what nonstate actor al-Qaeda has been
doing for Islamic fundamentalism.
The
architects of the present policy of harassing,
persecuting, abducting, torturing and assassinating
political activists justify what they’re doing in the
name of the same anticommunism that animated Phoenix and
Condor, no matter how late in the day it may be. (The
Cold War ended in 1990, and don’t they themselves
proclaim that communism is irrelevant, meaningless, and
dead in the 21st century?)
The same
missionary zeal that conveniently masked the greed for
resources and markets which saw mass murder as
justifiable in Vietnam and Latin America is evident in
the most recent statements of this country’s leading
security lights whether military or civilian. No doubt
once they achieve the same levels of success inside the
country, they too will do as Condor did—assassinate
selected personalities in their sanctuaries abroad.
As
dedicated as they may be to these ends, however, the
struggle against impunity and state terror has also
become globalized. It began in 1998 when a Spanish court
ordered the arrest of Augusto Pinochet, the late
dictator of Chile whose US-installed regime caused the
torture and deaths of tens of thousands of dissenters
and activists, including US journalists and nuns. That
court declared that crimes committed in any country may
be tried in others.
Of
relevance to the extrajudicial killings going on in this
country and others is the establishment of the
International Criminal Court. The Court was established
by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
adopted on July 17, 1998.
The Rome
Statute is an international treaty, binding only on
those States, which formally express their consent to be
bound by its provisions. These States then become
“Parties” to the Statute. In accordance with its terms,
the Statute entered into force on July 1, 2002, once 60
States had become Parties. One hundred and four states
are now Parties.
Like the
Bush government, the Arroyo regime is not a signatory to
the Treaty, which has invited suggestions that it fears
the prosecution of its officials for crimes against
humanity, as the US does. The US has in fact justified
its withdrawal from the Treaty by citing the case of
former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose
extradition to Uruguay has been requested by the lawyer
of the survivors of a victim of Operation Condor.
Kissinger was Secretary of State when that strategy was
in place, and has also been implicated in the 1973 coup
in Chile which put Pinochet in power. The US describes
the request for the extradition of Kissinger as
“absurd,” despite mounting evidence that he orchestrated
Condor and supported Right-wing coups in Latin America
while he was US Secretary of State and national security
adviser to two US Presidents.
The
Philippines’ being a nonsignatory to the Rome Statute
does not shut all doors to the prosecution of its
officials who may be responsible for the current
killings. As the case of Pinochet showed, the rapid
changes in international law have, among other
developments, allowed other states to prosecute their
nonnationals for crimes against humanity.
Although
the Permanent People’s Tribunal based in The Hague is
not a state agency, since its founding in 1979 it has
gained enough prestige for its findings to be credible.
Its March 25 declaration that the Philippine government
is responsible for the killing of political activists
may not have the force of law, but does count in the
court of international opinion.
It is in
that court where the Arroyo regime has been taking a
beating—among human-rights groups like Amnesty
International and the Asian Human Rights Council, in the
United Nations, and among the state agencies of various
countries including the US Senate, which has indirectly
taken the US Executive department to task for providing
military aid to a government likely to be responsible
for the ongoing harassment and murders of activists.
The
globalization of state terror is being met by the
globalization of the struggle against impunity. This
explains why the Arroyo regime has earned a harvest of
universal condemnation for the gross violations of human
rights now taking place that it either refuses to stop,
condones, encourages or orchestrates.
Comments? Contact the author at teodoro@ info.com.ph.
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