News update Philippine leader urged to end political killings

MANILA, Philippines – An international human rights watchdog Tuesday urged Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to fulfill his campaign promise to end suspected state-sponsored killings.

Human Rights Watch said four journalists, two leftist activists and a witness to an election-related massacre last year have been gunned down since Aquino was proclaimed the election winner in June. Security forces and gunmen hired by political warlords have been blamed for most of the killings.

Out of hundreds of extrajudicial killings and disappearances in the past decade, only six cases have been successfully prosecuted and 11 people convicted, none of them military members, the New York-based group said in an open letter to Aquino.

Aquino "needs to turn his promises into action by taking immediate steps to end widespread killings and hold the killers and those who deploy them accountable," said Elaine Pearson, acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"In numerous provinces, ruling families use militia forces and local police as their private armies," Pearson said.

The group said the new government should strengthen witness protection programs, abolish private armies and government-armed militias, institute tougher controls on local government procurement of weapons and dismantle "death squads" and investigate government involvement.

Pearson said that Aquino has personally suffered as a result of a government-instigated killing and "more than most would recognize that ending such killings would be an important and lasting legacy of his administration."

The new president is the son of an assassinated opposition senator and his mother restored democracy after leading a 1986 "people power" revolt that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Aquino promised in his inauguration speech "there can be no reconciliation without justice" and ordered Justice Secretary Leila de Lima _ former chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights _ to speed up investigations.

In his first meeting with senior military commanders Monday, Aquino said he will not differentiate "between those who implement the law but break it, and those who are outside the law."

Human rights organizations and the U.N. special investigator on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, have blamed security forces under Aquino's predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for as many as 1,000 deaths since 2001, most of them farmers and activists accused by the military of collaborating with communist insurgents. Most of the killings are carried out by suspected gunmen for hire who escape on motorcycles.

Renato Reyes, secretary general of the largest left-wing alliance Bayan, called on Aquino to dismantle the military's counterinsurgency program, which he claimed was responsible for the civilian deaths.