HRW urges follow-up on other alleged rights violators
By Julius D. Mariveles
THE US-based Human Rights Watch urged President Benigno S. Aquino III to follow-up on the “extraordinary” arrest of retired Army major general and former Bantay partylist Rep. Jovito Palparan by arresting other high-profile alleged rights abusers.
The arrest of Palparan “marks a rare challenge to the country’s rampant impunity, which the government of (Aquino) has failed to adequately address,” HRW Philippines researcher Carlos Conde said in a dispatch.
Palparan, whom HRW called as a “symbol of impunity,” had evaded arrest over the past three years and had been “thumbing his nose at the authorities with the alleged help of former military colleagues.”
CHECKMATE: General Jovito Palparan
HRW said Palparan has been “notorious” for his alleged role in the abduction, torture, and enforced disappearance of farmers’ rights activists Sherlyn Cadapan and in 2006. There is also evidence linking his unit to the torture of Raymond Manalo, who later testified that he witnessed soldiers under Palparan’s command torture Cadapan and Empeño, Conde added.
During his stint as a brigade commander in Oriental Mindoro province, he was also implicated in the abduction, torture, and murder of at least 29 leftist activists beginning in 2001, making him a “visible symbol of military brutality during the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Arroyo also praised Palparan during her State of the Nation Address in 2006 for his role in implementing the “new strategy” of the government’s counter-insurgency campaign that had resulted in widespread rights abuses.
While Palparan’s arrest gives Aquino the opportunity to make “real progress on his long unfulfilled promise to end rights abuses in the Philippines,” he should also follow-up on it by bringing to justice other high-profile rights abusers like former Mayor Rey Uy, the alleged mastermind of the Tagum City “death squad
The HRW also called on Aquino to jumpstart the “moribund” juidicial superbody that he ordered created in 2012 to speed up the investigation and prosecution of extrajudicial killings and to ensure that Palparan goes to trial “without interference from powerful elements in the military who might seek to protect him.”
THE MAN WHO, by his own account, was once considered “a weakling” who would not survive in the real world, had thought of himself as the necessary iron fist that would clear the country, not just of the communist New People’s Army, but of all militant organizations.
Jovito Salvaña Palparan Jr. was arrested by operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation in a dawn raid in Manila Tuesday morning, putting an end to a three-year manhunt for the man dubbed by militant groups as the Butcher of Central Luzon and Samar because of the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances in the jurisdictions he was assigned to. He was also perceived as the architect of the all-out war of the administration of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo until his retirement as a Major General in September 2006.
CHECKMATE: General Jovito Palparan
Yet in separate interviews conducted with Palaparan at the height of the all-out war in 2006, Palparan painted himself as a curious study in contrasts, a man who was not afraid to be politically incorrect, and who was willing to put into words, in stark black and white, what some sectors in the military thought but would not dare say about the communist insurgency.
In those interviews, Palparan made no bones about his intention to “clear” his jurisdiction of all militant groups, “both armed and non-armed,” saying that these groups provided material and logistical support for an insurgency that has festered for more than four decades.
The man labelled by human rights groups as a butcher also said he is not even sure if he has personally killed any person in his 33 years in the military, even though many of those years were spent in some of the most bloody battlegrounds of the country. Palparan also claimed that he has never ordered the death of any specific person, although he acknowledges that his words provide the “guidance” that his men carry out.
“Kung ako lang ang masusunod, it should be a very decisive action against the movement,” Palaran said in an interview for the ABC-5 documentary State of War in 2006, when he was still commanding general of the 7th Infantry Division in Central Luzon. “There should be no militant organization existing in an area if it is already cleared, because they have no place na maloko nila ang tao.”
(If I had my way, it should be a very decision action against the movement. There should be no militant organization existing in an area if it is already cleared, because they have no place to fool people.)
Asked if he was responsible for extrajudicial killings of militant leaders in his area, Palaparan said he has no “direct responsibility.”
“Hindi ko aaminin ang direct responsibility,” he said in that interview. “Pero maari na because of my efforts and my aggressiveness and determination, at yung mga pronouncements ko, perhaps I could be responsible on that aspect.”
(I will not take direct responsibility. But perhaps because of my efforts and my aggressiveness and determination and my pronouncements, perhaps I could be responsible in that aspect.)
In another interview with Palparan by the defunct documentary show Frontlines on ABC-5 two months after his retirement in September 2006, Palparan expressed disappointment that he was not given a bigger role and a wider jurisdiction with which to practice what he preached.
“Kung nabigyan pa ako ng panahon na may command ako na malaki, sa tingin ko mas malaki pa ang magagawa ko,” he said. “I could have completely cleared Central Luzon. It took me six months to clear Samar.”
(If I had been given more time and a larger command, I think I could have done so much more. I could have completely cleared Central Luzon. It took me six months to clear Samar.)
Palparan is an advocate of aggressive, unequivocal, and determined action against perceived enemies of the state and their supporters, saying that this was actually the only way to minimize deaths.
“When you give all-out effort, ang result niyan is lesser casualties and lesser resources spent,” he said. “Ganyan ako, paspasan, todo-todo. Mas marami kang nasasave.”
(When you give all-out effort, the result is lesser casualties and lesser resources spent. That is my style, rush in, go all the way. You get to save more.)
Palaparan longed for the days when Republic Act No. 1700, the Anti-SUbversion Law, was still in effect, saying it allowed the government to be more aggressive in going after both armed and non-armed groups.
“Kung desidido sila, lahat ng involved, lahat ng cadre, pinagkukuha talaga yun, kinasuhan. They are punished. Both armed and non-armed. Yung educator nila, propagandist, kasama iyun,” he said.
(If they are determined, everyone involved, all the cadre would be picked up and charged. They are punished. Both armed and non-armed. They educators and propagandists are also included.)
Asked how government could possibly pick up and charge all militants, Palparan replied: “Then our coercive power of the state applies. We are the coercive power of the state. Kung loko-loko ka, matakot ka sa amin.” (If you are a troublemaker, be afraid of us.)
Palparan also expressed envy for other countries that have “complete control of the media,” saying it would have helped his cause.
“In other countries there is complete control of the media as far as terrorism and insurgency,” he said. “Bakit, nung time ni Marcos may complete control, It can happen.” (During the time of Marcos, there was complete control. It can happen.)
The man who redefined the image of the military in the Gloria Arroyo years was not even a graduate of the state’s military school, the Philippine Military Academy. Palaparan joined the military through the Reserved Officers Training Course or ROTC. Before that, Palparan relates, he was perceived by many as a weakling.
“Ang tingin kasi nila, parang weakling ako, parang hindi ako survivor,” Palparan says. (They saw me as a weakling, someone who is not a survivor.)
In his eyes, Palparan says the one event that truly defined his character and mindset was his experience in the battlefields of Mindanao.
In 1973, fresh off his ROTC, Palparan was given command of the 24th Infantry Battalion, the Wildcats, in Jolo, Sulu. It was the height of the Moro rebellion, and Palaparan and his men would be scarred by the things they saw and did in the jungles of Sulu. It was a camaraderie forged in fire. In fact, whenever Palparan would visit the housing compound for his old men from Jolo in Taguig city, his old soldiers would all come out to greet him and recall those hairy days.
“Yung radio operator ko, namatay katabi ko,” Palparan recalls. “Sigaw ng sigaw, Nanaaayy! Hindi na umabot ng umaga.” (My radio operator died beside me. He was shouting for his mother. He died before dawn.)
Palparan recalls losing an entire platoon, more than 30 men, in an encounter. Sometimes, he would have to kick or beat his men who would refuse to fight because they were terrified. For every five men he commanded, two would go home in body bags. Palaparan would spend the next eight years fighting in Jolo and Basilan.
During one such visit, Palparan and his old men talked about some of the atrocities committed in that conflict, apparently forgetting the videocamera that was there to document their reunion.
“Tinatanggal namin ang tenga, tinutuhog namin iyan,” one of Palparan’s old soldiers volunteered during that reunion. “Meaning, number ng patay iyan. Pero hindi namin kinakain.”
(We would remove the ears and string them up. That means the number of dead enemies. But we don’t eat that.)
Palparan said this was practiced because some commanders would cheat on the “body count” of enemy dead. He said the practice was eventually stopped. However, Palparan acknowledged that there was a time that they would even collect heads. “Kaya inaano ang tenga… pero hininto rin iyan! Dahil pag nagreport ng casualty, yung body count dinadaya. Pag may mga tenga kang dala… nung una nga ulo eh.”
(The reason we take ears… but we eventually stopped it! The casualty reports, the body counts were being rigged. If you have ears… at first, we used heads.”
In the end, Palparan said he was very conscious of the fact that there were many people after his head, especially from the New People’s Army. To this threat, Palparan displayed a mix of fatalism and bravado.
“Pag pumunta ako sa lugar, sigurado ako na walang papatay sa akin diyan,” he said. “Kasi siguro, ang papatay sa akin, patay na.”
(If I go to a place, I am certain that no one there will kill me. Maybe that is because the man who will kill me is already dead.)
EX-ARMY general and former congressman Jovito Palparan has been accused of ordering the abduction, torture, and murder of civilians whom he suspected to be connected with or sympathizers of the underground revolutionary movement.
His arrest early morning Tuesday, August 12, 2014, in Santa Mesa in the capital Philippine city of Manila, ended his three years of hiding after a local court issued an arrest warrant against him for alleged kidnapping and serious illegal detention.
The victims were two students, Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan, reportedly abducted in 2006. They remain missing.
CHECKMATE: General Jovito Palparan
Activist organizations have called him “The Butcher of Mindoro” for leading what these groups call a vicious and ruthless counter-insurgency campaign during the administration of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo when he headed the Army’s 204th Brigade in Mindoro and, eventually, the 8th Infantry Division in Eastern Visayas. Before his retirement in September 2006, he was assigned to head the 7th Infantry Division in Central Luzon.
The court has yet to decide if Palparan is guilty or not. Aside from the case against him for the abduction of Empeno and Cadapan, human rights organizations also implicated him in the following cases:
The alleged abduction and torture of brothers Raymond and Reynaldo Manalo;
The abduction and killing of human rights worker Eden Marcellana and peasant leader Eddie Gumanoy; and
The murders of Expedito and Manuela Abarillo, Ruben, Rodriga, and Niña Angela Apolinar; and Edilberto Napoles.
MISSING: Sherlyn Cadapdan and Karen Empeno remain missing. They were allegedly abducted and brought to a military camp where they were raped and tortured.
The Alliance for the Advancement of Human Rights (Karapatan) also released a record of Palparan showing the alleged atrocities that he committed dating all the way back to the 1980s when he was assigned in Central Luzon.
The cases include the alleged abduction of torture of peasant organizers and activists, the evacuation of several families in Santa Cruz, Zambals when the 24th IB conducted shelling operations, at least one case of summary execution, one disappearance, and several cases of illegal arrest and harassment in the Mountain Province.
Karapatan also claimed that they were able to document at least 61 cases of human rights violations including seven killings of civilians, one of them a five-year-old child, in 2001 when Palparan commanded the Task Force Banahaw in Laguna.
Like Palparan, former Army general Raymundo Jarque also went into hiding, publicly declaring in 1995 that he will be seeking refuge in the mountain lairs of the New People’s Army in Negros, the island where he led two major military campaigns during former President Corazon Aquino’s term.
Oplan Thunderbolt and Oplan Rolling Thunder were credited by the government for crippling the NPA’s backbone in southern Negros but it was also blamed for the evacuation of thousands of civilians, scores of whom died in cramped evacuation centers in the capital city of Bacolod.
“He went into hiding for a different cause, it is unlike what I did because I felt that I was a victim of injustice then,” Jarque told the PCIJ in reaction to the arrest of Palparan.
Jarque and several of his soldiers were ordered arrested for allegedly stealing prawns from the property of former Pulupandan town Mayor Magdaleno Pena, an influential lawyer and sugarcane planter. Jarque was also linked to the ambush of then Ombudsman Aniano Desierto who was hearing the case against him.
NPA Red fighters stage a mock assault during a celebration for the anniversary of the local communist movement in an upland barangay somewhere in Negros island in late 1994 | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles
Like Palparan, Jarque also commanded a brigade during his stint in Negros. Asked how far a general can go in implementing the government’s counter-insurgency operations, Jarque said: “it depends on how you value your honor.”
Did Palparan act alone or were his alleged actions part of a systematic campaign?
In September 12, 2006, Professor Miriam Coronel Ferrer of the University of the Philippines’ Center for Integrative and Development Studies said during a forum “Violence Against Movements, Movements Against Violence” that:
“The unprecedented high number of killings of political activists associated with national democratic organizations… in (a) compressed time is part of this ‘collective punishment’ frame; the extra-judicial killings we have seen share the same features of rural community-based counter-guerilla warfare: indiscriminate or dismissive of the distinction between combatants and non-combatants, and clouded by ‘hate language’ and demonization of the enemy.”
The desired impact of the killings, she said:
“…is the same: fear, paralysis, scuttling of the organizational network, albeit not just in the local but the national sense. The goal is to break the infrastructure of the movement whose good showing in the past election (under the party list system) and corresponding access to pork-barrel funds and a public platform were, from the point of view of the anti-communist state, alarming.”
Before the nationwide killings went on an upsurge, then President Arroyo announced in June 2006 that the government has adopted a “new strategy” of all-out war against Maoist rebels represented by the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army.
“The CPP-NPA has done enough setting back peace and development for more than 30 years,” said then presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye. “The time has come to finally defeat this threat through a combination of military operations, law enforcement, and pro-poor programs.”
At least P1 billion was allotted by then President Arroyo for this campaign and thousands of soldiers were re-deployed to southern Luzon and Bicol region, two areas where the Communist movement is strong.
HE WENT into hiding for a different cause, former general Raymundo Jarque says about Palparan | PCIJ Photo
Joel Rocamora of the Institute of Popular Democracy, interviewed by Human Rights Watch in 2007, said that this declaration by Arroyo “to root out an insurgency that’s been going on for the last 30 years… creates an atmosphere within the military where the President says we have to get this done, and we can’t get it done on the battlefield, so let’s get at them by other means…(and) take shortcuts.”
The US-based HRW also said in its country report in 2007 that it was “concerned that the pressure of Arroyo’s declaration of a two-year deadline for the military to eradicate the communist insurgents has had a dangerous effect on civilians in areas targeted for counter-insurgency actions.”
“(These are) being attributed to me, but I did not kill them. I just inspired (the triggermen)…We are not admitting responsibility here, what I’m saying is that these are necessary incidents.”
- “In his all-out war against the reds, this General dubbed the Butcher claims conscience is the least of his concerns,” interview by Fe B. Zamora, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, July 2, 2006
“It is my belief that these members of party lists in Congress are providing the day-to-day policies of the (rebel) movement.”
- “General Palparan: Leftist rebellion can be solved in two years,” Agence France Presse, February 2, 2006
“(They) provide materials and shelter (for the NPA)… (they) are legal but they are doing illegal activities.”
– “Make Communism Illegal Again,” Tonette Orejas and Norman Bordadora, Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 21, 2006
“We need to strengthen our legal offensive… There will be some collateral damage but it will be short and tolerable, (and in the end) acceptable… The enemy would blow it up as a massive violation of human rights, but to me it would be just necessary incidents compared to what happen really if we do not decisively confront the problem.”
– “General Palparan: Leftist rebellion can be solved in two years,” Agence France Presse, February 2, 2006
It remains to be seen if Palparan acted alone, inspired others, or was ordered to carry out a campaign like Operation Phoenix conducted by the American Central Intelligence Agency in Vietnam where civilians who were seen as part of the “political infrastructure” were deliberately targeted, and murdered.
Then Bulacan Gov. Josie dela Cruz, interviewed by HRW for its 2007 report, described Palparan during her meeting with him on numerous occasions: “In his terminology, there are no sympathizers, you are either with the NPA or not…As far as Palparan is concerned, once you deal with the NPA you are the NPA.”
