Release Arrested Peace Consultants. Support Genuine Land Reform As Pathway To A Just Peace.

November 5, 2024

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) denounces the non-respect of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) to their ongoing peace process with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). The recent series of arrests of NDFP peace consultants Simeon Naogsan, Porferio Tuna, and Wigberto Villarico by the Marcos Jr. government is part of their longstanding campaign to undermine the peace process with the NDFP. We call for their immediate release.

The three peace consultants are holders of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), an agreement between the GRP and the NDFP. They have a long track record of working alongside impoverished and militarized rural communities on the struggle and program for genuine land reform.

“The arbitrary arrests and detentions of these consultants are blatant violations by the GRP of the JASIG, signed to assure the safety and immunity of those involved in the peace process against threat, harassment, arrest, detention, or killing. Such attacks on peace consultants further exemplify the Marcos Jr. regime’s insincerity to resolve the root causes of the armed conflict to attain just and lasting peace,” said ICHRP Chairperson Peter Murphy.

“The Philippine government’s long history of targeting NDFP peace consultants demonstrates its deceitfulness in pursuing just peace. Resolving the roots of the armed conflict in the country includes addressing the issue of landlessness for the majority. NDFP peace consultants are entrenched with the rural poor in the militarized countryside, working with peasants, farm workers, fisherfolk, and indigenous peoples on grassroots campaigns against land-grabbing by big foreign corporations and big landlords,” Murphy stated.

At least 14 peace consultants have been murdered by the Philippine government since it withdrew from peace talks with the NDFP in 2017. These violations of International Humanitarian Law continue to occur under the Marcos Jr. regime. This past September 11, 2024, another NDFP Consultant, Ariel Arbitrario, was killed in the northern Philippines while in the custody of the 502nd Brigade, 5th Infantry Division of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). He was captured and reportedly subjected to torture. These are clear violations of International Humanitarian Law.

Another NDFP peace consultant, Rogelio Posadas, was arrested and summarily executed by state agents on April 20, 2023. The killing of Posadas came just days after the announcement of the deaths of Benito and Wilma Tiamzon, NDFP negotiating panel member and consultant. They were reportedly captured with eight others in August 2022, tortured, killed, and their bodies placed in a boat which was later blown up by the military.

Other recent victims in the killing spree against peace consultants rendered hors de combat by the AFP include Ericson Acosta, poet, songwriter, and cultural worker; and peasant organizer Joseph Jimenez, both arrested and then executed in Negros Occidental, on November 30, 2022. Pedro Codaste was abducted on January 19, 2022, in Bukidnon, Mindanao, and falsely declared killed in an encounter. “These cases of abduction, torture and execution by the AFP represent clear violations of International Humanitarian Law. These incidents are another affirmation of the verdict of the International People’s Tribunal 2024, which found the US government, and the Marcos Jr. and Duterte regimes, guilty of war crimes,” said Murphy.

Peasants all over the country continue to struggle under intense poverty and landlessness while the Marcos Jr. regime neglects the implementation of genuine agrarian reform and opens up the Philippines to more investment that favors foreign profit. Indigenous peoples suffer intense military pressure to give up control of their remaining ancestral domains to logging, mining and plantation corporations. Food prices continue to increase while living wages remain paltry. Instead of addressing these problems, the Marcos Jr. regime commits widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including red-tagging, bombing, strafing, military encampment, and various forms of threats and harassment against poor activists and human rights defenders. This militarist approach attempts to vilify dissent while doing nothing to develop a substantial response to the social and economic problems of the Filipino people.

“ICHRP remains deeply concerned about the intensifying level of oppression and repression. The Marcos Jr. government seems to be more interested in creating roadblocks than negotiating for a peaceful resolution to the civil war. The Filipino people are also determined to pursue their cause and exercise their right to self determination. As such, the armed conflict will continue to persist.

“We want to let President Marcos Jr. know that the international community is concerned about the ongoing state of terror in the Philippines. We will continue to expose the blatant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law by the Philippine government as we expand our support for the demands of peasants, workers, and other oppressed people in the Philippines,” concluded Murphy.

ICHRP calls on the Marcos government to:

• Stop the attacks on peace consultants and end all violations of International Humanitarian Law. Uphold human rights and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Additional Protocols of 1977.
• Address the urgent concerns of the Filipino people and the root causes of the armed conflict. Implement Genuine Land Reform!
• Rejoin the International Criminal Court and allow it to conduct investigations in the Philippines related to the alleged crime against humanity of murder and other violations of International Humanitarian Law by the Duterte government.
• Respect all previously signed peace agreements between the GRP and the NDFP.
• Release the 791 political prisoners who remain in detention.

© Scoop Media