DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / July 16, 2013) – The Philippines is set to use unmanned aerial vehicles to combat illegal logging in the southern provinces of Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley, a known stronghold of communist rebels.
The use of drones in combating illegal logging is a joint project of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
But for League of Filipino Students (LFS) and the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), the use of spy planes in the country is not new despite the “colossal denial” of President Benigno Aquino.
They said a recent New York Time article by Mark Mazzeti called “The Drone Zone” claims that the United States conducted at least one drone strike in Mindanao.
“Under the Aquino regime’s Oplan Bayanihan, Davao is the most militarized region in the country with the presence of 21 military battalions under the three infantry divisions of AFP – 1st ID, 4th ID and 10th ID – and this resulted to 11 cases of extrajudicial killing in the region alone and widespread displacement of lumads and farmers due to military atrocities,” Arnielyn Nudalo, LFS-UM spokesperson, said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
“The Aquino government and AFP cannot fool the people. If it is truly sincere in protecting the environment, then the Aquino regime should not allow foreign and large scale mining and logging in the region,” he added.
LFS said the reasoning of DENR and AFP in using drone to intensify anti-illegal logging operation is “unbelievable and unthinkable.”
“It is dubious to say that drone plane be deployed in the region just to track down illegal loggers and be used for the implementation of national greening program of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. It is a common knowledge that Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley are the strong-hold areas of the New People’s Army,” it said.
Bayan said unmanned aerial vehicles fall into two categories – those that are used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes and those that are armed with missiles and bombs. A low-cost drone, it said, for instance cost anywhere from $5 million to $10 million.
According to a 2010 report of Philip Alston, a UN human rights rapporteur, the use of drone planes has become a vaguely defined and unaccountable to thousands of killings in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An article in The Guardian, the American Civil Liberties Union stated that as many as 4,000 people have been killed in U.S. drone strikes since 2002. Of those, a significant proportion was civilians. The numbers killed have escalated significantly since Barack Obama became president, according to LFS.
The Philippine military has previously used China-made hobby helicopters and air planes controlled remotely to monitor rebel strongholds. But U.S. troops deployed in Mindanao have a fleet of UAVs that they commissioned to spy on communist and Moro rebel areas in the region and that some of them had crashed at sea or recovered by rebels themselves. (Mindanao Examiner)
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