By David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
MANILA, Philippines – A powerful political family is brought to trial for plotting what is known as the deadliest incident for journalists since 1992, when the Committee to Protect Journalists began recording journalist deaths. On November 23, 2009, 57 people – 32 of them journalist and media personnel, were slaughtered as they traveled in Maguindanao province with intentions of filing “gubernatorial candidacy papers for a local candidate”.
Nine months later, there are 19 people who stand accused at trial, out of a total of 195 named in the overall prosecution, while 127 suspects remain at large. The ultimate question remains, “whether the people who ordered the killings – not just the triggermen — will ever be brought to justice. The well-known identities of the political in-group behind the killings are believed to be local allies of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Ampatuan Jr, then a local mayor, allegedly led the massacre to stop the rival from running against him for the post of governor of Maguindanao province in this year’s national elections.
Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia chief of HRW, said five people with knowledge of alleged abuses by Ampatuan and his supporters have been killed since the massacre.
“It is difficult to fight these devils,” she told AFP news agency. Knowing the dark history of and rampant nature of political killing, she remarks, “We want to see the light of justice.”
The first witness is a man named Lakmudin Saliao, once sworn in he testified that Ampatuan’s father, Andal Ampatuan Sr., and brother, Zaldy Ampatuan, were present at a meeting on November 17 where they helped plan the massacre. The witness, a former house servant, said the family had discussed killing their political rivals six days before the ambush in which 57 people died.
Journalists in provincial Philippines have been killed regularly; typically they are gunned down by two men on a motorcycle, as they make their way to work, or drop off their children at school, or meet a source for lunch.
Since 2000, 32 journalists, other than those who died in Maguindanao, have been killed and in only five of the cases has there been even partial justice. In none of the cases have the more politically well-connected men who paid them and ordered the executions have ever been tried, let alone found guilty.
Convictions of the killers of journalists in the Philippines are so rare that CPJ’s Impunity Index, which measures the rate of successful prosecutions, ranks the country third worst, behind only Iraq and Somalia.
The Secretary of the Philippines’ Justice Department, Leila de Lima, has called the trial a “litmus test” for the country’s judicial system, according to press reports. The Maguindanao “litmus test” will really be a report not just on the state of the nation’s judiciary, but a frank indicator of the country’s future.
The summation of this trial will not address one of the root causes of the massacre, the Philippines tolerance for locally run paramilitary forces, which under national laws are allowed to deputize local militias to combat Muslim separatist fighters in the country, the Ampatuan’s have built up what amounts to a large private army.
“The government has not done anything to disable and disarm these paramilitary forces,” Evans said.
For more information, please see;
Al Jazeera English – Philippine massacre trial begins – 9 September, 2010
CNN – Trial expected to begin over Philippine massacre – 6 September, 2010
BBC – Ampatuan family ‘plotted Philippines massacre’ – 8 September, 2010
Huffington Post – The Worst Massacre You Never Heard Of – 23 August, 2010
