Ampatuan massacre revisited

Cong Corrales

WHENEVER the “ber” months start rolling in, I used to look forward to Christmas like a giddy kid. But now, I try to find out whatever happened to the case of the Ampatuan Massacre. On Saturday was the 94th month since Nov. 23, 2009, when 58 people — 32 of whom were media workers — were waylaid in what has become known throughout the world as the Ampatuan Massacre, the worst case of election violence in the country, and the biggest case of violence against journalists in the world.

The incident has caught the country flat-footed, yet it also exposed several long-festering, and in many aspects, long-known yet unaddressed issues. On one hand, the incident served as a grisly wake-up call for both national government and local and international civil societies on the issues of election violence, clan politics and dynamics, and violence against media. On the other hand, ending impunity became the priority mission of both the Philippine government and civil societies.

In coordination with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Libertas, a legal policy non-government organization, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) launched in 2013 a research project that dissected the massacre case as a way to understand these issues and offer recommendations for reforms in the country’s judicial system.

I would like to revisit this study because the recommendations it propped up are still as applicable today as it was four years ago especially now that this current administration is broaching authoritarianism by the day.

The research project output is a book entitled “Maguindanao Massacre: Case Study for Breaking Impunity, Increasing Accountability, and Broadening Access to Justice.” It is a compendium of interviews, focus group discussions and dialogues with “family members of the Ampatuan Massacre victims, key informants who are private or public prosecutors, officials from the security sector, relevant government agencies, and representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) and media organizations.”

At the crux of the case study is the fact there is still no clear-cut definition of extrajudicial killing (EJK) especially for state players prosecuting the criminal act. The study posits that a good definition is important to set this specific criminal act apart from the other crimes. It further suggests that this particular crime be called “unexplained killing” and “to let it cover both state and non-state perpetrators.” In this way, the study broadened its scope of coverage to be more inclusive of other similar cases of EJKs, not just in Maguindanao or Mindanao, but all over the country as well.

Red-tagging of this type of crime, or identifying specific cases for special attention, also puts “value” since red-tagged cases are more closely monitored by the justice department at the regional level. The label also attracts more public attention, thereby potentially increasing the confidence level of the witnesses. “It is suggested that red-tagging be done at the point of filing information in court, and that red-tagged cases no longer be raffled. Aside from special handling by the prosecution, this will also facilitate human rights documentation and monitoring,” the case study reads.

The case study proposes that special courts be designated to hear this type of crime continuously. Study proponents also proposed – by way of citing one of the observation of its key informants — the resumption of peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GPH) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), because “while peace talks are ongoing, extrajudicial killings are seen to slow down and become intermittent.” In order to further speed up the court processes on EJKs and other human rights violation cases, the case study also proposes there be mechanisms in the rules of court to allow the perpetuation of testimonies of witnesses.

According to the case study, key informants from both the government and civil societies agree that there should be an enabling law on command responsibility to exact criminal liability and for command responsibility to be applicable to all criminal offenses under the country’s Revised Penal Code. The case study also recommended that there should be “transparency in the conduct of internal investigations and in the military justice system.”

Presently, the rules on command responsibility in the Philippines cover only as high as two degrees. However, a respondent from the Philippine Army conceded that — with respect to civilian supremacy over state security forces — court martial will surrender the “subject and the case even if there is a separate crime or administrative case arising under the Articles of War,” provided that there will be clear parameters.

On Aug 30, 2011, the Senate gave its concurrence to the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute, among others, defines the coverage of the doctrine of command responsibility to all state signatories of the international.

Other recommendations put forward by the study include:

• requiring a human rights clearance process for personnel in all law enforcement agencies;
• enhancing and increasing coverage of the Witness Protection Program (WPP);
• training of paralegals on investigation and legal support in the prosecution of cases;
• more inter-agency cooperation and evidence-sharing among agencies involved in the investigation and prosecution of the cases;
• initiation of administrative cases involving human rights violations by government agencies despite the absence of private complainants;
• more effective firearms control through improved logistics management system by the Armed Forces of the Philippines;
• more concrete measures to depoliticize the local police force; and
• engagement of the Anti-Money Laundering Council in cases involving human rights violations.

The recommendations for more effective firearms control and the need to depoliticize the local police forces stood out starkly against the backdrop of the Ampatuan Massacre. The Ampatuan clan, the family accused of masterminding the massacre, has been accused of amassing firearms and ammunition through the help of regional and national patrons. In effect, the Ampatuan clan had been able to build its own legal private army using both government arms and ammunition.

As well, the clan has been accused of using the local police force in Maguindanao in carrying out the massacre. Based on the Local Government Code, the local governments have operational control over the local police forces. In the case of the Ampatuan Massacre, the local police units were said to have been compromised by the clan because the clan had full control over the appointments and perks of the local police officers.

During the course of the case study, it was also recommended that there should be a “community and peer support in the prosecution of criminal cases” and a “rationalized and integrated financial and other support for victims of atrocious crimes, including families of the Maguindanao Massacre victims.” These recommendations stem from the outcome of a series of FGDs with the families of the massacre victims.

“In this respect, a cohesive financial support program with support coming from various sources may be rationalized and administered just by one agency, perhaps the CHRP or the DSWD, so that the families need only coordinate with one agency, Requirements can be streamlined by such agency, so that the families need not undergo repetitive processes for screening, which merely add to the families’ difficulty and frustration,” the case study recommends.

As observed in the prosecution of EJK and other human rights violations cases in the country, testimonial evidences play a crucial role. When witnesses and families of massacre victims are killed, harassed and often times slapped with trumped up retaliatory charges in court quicker than the respondents of the cases are arrested, then it negates the whole judicial process.

“Hence, there is critical need to secure witnesses. Unfortunately, one common observation is the lack of funds and insufficient of support for witnesses under the Witness Protection Program (WPP),” the case study points out. Thus, the case study also recommends that the justice department’s Witness Protection Program (WPP) be enhanced and its coverage increased.

“Truly, the Maguindanao Massacre was an unspeakable crime. It represents all that is evil in our political system. It shows what is dysfunctional in our legal processes. The only good that can come out of it is that it compels us to train our sights on these infirmities, and galvanizes our resolve as a nation to address it. The above recommendations are made in this light, so that the lost lives of the victims may not be put to naught,” the case study reads in part.