MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / June 28, 2012) – Human rights group Karapatan has scored the reported killing of Alijol Ampatuan, the 3rd witness in the trial of the so-called Maguindanao massacre case, and he suffered the same fate as the others as the murder bears the seal of impunity prevalent under the Arroyo up to the current Aquino administration.
“Alijol Ampatuan’s killing is a testament to the prevailing climate of impunity in the Philippines, where victims, their kin, and witnesses are silenced through summary executions and where justice for rights violations remains a distant reality under the Aquino presidency, as it approaches the 2nd year of term,” said Karapatan spokesperson and End Impunity Alliance convenor Cristina Palabay in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
Reports on Alijol’s killing came three weeks after the brutal murder of Esmael Amil Enog, another witness to the massacre of 58 journalists, lawyers, and individuals in November 2009 in Maguindanao, one of five provinces under the Autonomous Regionn in Muslim Mindanao.
It said the latest killing coincided with the UN review of the Philippines’ compliance to international human rights treaties and obligations.
“Aquino should answer for his administration’s unforgivable inaction to successfully prosecute, put behind bars and convict perpetrators of rights abuses under Arroyo, despite the persistence of the victims and their relatives to file cases. The government’s special treatment of notorious violators like former Pres. Arroyo and the Ampatuans and the non-arrest of Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan remain as obstacles to meting out justice,” Palabay said.
Palparan was linked to extrajudicial killings of political activists who were suspected as either supporters or members of the communist rebel group New People’s Army.
Karapatan attributed the Aquino administration’s lackluster performance of seek the accountability of these perpetrators to the consistency of the pattern of killings and rights abuses being perpetuated by Aquino’s state security forces to that of Arroyo.
“Aquino mimics Arroyo’s repressive and violent scourge against civilians and activists through his counter-insurgency program Oplan Bayanihan. The implementation of the oplan has already resulted to 76 victims of extrajudicial killings and thousands of forcibly displaced peoples because of intense military operations and rights abuses in Mindanao, Samar, and Southern Tagalog, as well as in the rest of the provinces,” Palabay said.
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