In the Philippines, women and children have not been spared from state-sponsored violence.

March 8, International Women’s Day, would hold painful significance for Angie Ipong, a 64 year-old peace advocate. She was forcibly taken by soldiers during a peace workshop in Mindanao, last March 8, 2005. During interrogation, she endured molestation and sexual abuse at the hands of her captors. She was surfaced after 14 days and is presently detained at the Pagadian City Jail.

Nine-year old Grecil would have been an honor student last school year. She was an intelligent and kind girl, according to her teachers and friends. Grecil’s bright future was abruptly extinguished when soldiers sprayed her with bullets during a military operation in a village in Mindanao. The military initially claimed that she was a “child soldier”, photographing her lifeless body with a machine gun (longer than her slight frame) beside her. The head of the battalion later admitted that Grecil had been caught in a crossfire with New People’s Army guerillas. Grecil’s parents filed a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights. To date, no decision has been handed down on the case.

University students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno were conducting community research in a small village in the town of Bulacan, in the central part of Luzon region, Philippines. They were abducted in 2007 by military men in the middle of the night. According to witnesses’ accounts, the two women were held captive in a military camp and were repeatedly gang-raped by soldiers. They were tied to the bed so as to ensure that they could not escape. At times, they were stripped naked and were ordered to sing or dance in front of the soldiers. Sherlyn, who was pregnant during the time of the abduction, attempted to communicate with her in-laws through a letter, but she was caught by her guards. She was heavily tortured and was hanged upside down. As of this writing, the two women are still missing.

The Philippine Experience

In July 2007, the Human Security Act (HSA) came into effect in the midst of international criticism and public outcries against the massive human rights abuses being perpetuated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime. Ms. Arroyo signed the HSA into law despite warnings from the Supreme Court that its passage could lead to more violations of human rights.

Even before the enactment of the HSA, the Arroyo government has been realizing the aims of the program Oplan Bantay Laya (Freedom Watch), a counter-insurgency program patterned after the US military strategy on its war on terror. The Arroyo government received US$4.6 billion in US military assistance for the armed forces, with an additional US$ 30 million allotted for counter-terrorism trainings.

The program divides military operations into four stages: conduct of military operations to “clear” the area of “terrorists” or insurgents; “hold” the area by forming paramilitary groups and an intelligence network; “consolidate” the area by improving relations between the AFP and the civilian population through civic action operations such as medical and dental missions; and “develop” the area by introducing livelihood and development projects.

The program’s pre-emptive strikes, particularly the abduction, torture, and killings of suspected terrorists, have been widely condemned by human rights watchdogs in and outside of the country, including the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, Mr. Philip Alston. On the other hand, the provision of services like medical and dental missions are merely palliative and do not provide impoverished communities with long-term access to essential services.

With the Oplan Bantay Laya in place, the curtailment of civil liberties became rampant. Since Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001 until October 2007, there have been 4,969 incidents of state-sponsored human rights violations (HRVs), 1,010 of the cases involved women and 303 involved children victims of HRVs. (See Tables 1 and 2)

In the first quarter of 2008, 21,456 human rights cases were recorded: 7,442 persons were displaced, 2,815 were threatened or harassed, more than 3,000 experienced food blockades, and more than 5,000 experienced indiscriminate firing. (See Table 3)

As women become more assertive in fighting for their rights, they are more vulnerable to violence. Activists and human rights advocates are outrightly considered by the military as “communists” and therefore enemies of the state who ought to be humiliated, tortured and even eliminated. They are often abducted. As of October 2007, 28 women activists have been reported missing after being abducted by military men, Lisa Posa-Dominado, a human rights activist and organizer in the Philippines, among them.

Owing to the active condemnation of the international community and the unwavering vigilance of Filipino human rights groups, the number of cases of extra-judicial killings has tapered off since 2007. Even so, there were 13 victims of extrajudicial killings, four of them women, by the start of 2008.

There are around 235 women political prisoners jailed in different parts of the country, 204 of them imprisoned under Arroyo’s term. As of March 31, 2008, 18 women are still detained in different parts of the country. Sexual abuse as a form of torture by state security forces are not rare or isolated occurrences as shown in the case of Angie Ipong, who even at her senior age of 64 had suffered molestation from the military.

Joint Military Exercises with US troops

US troops have frequented the Philippines under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). Since 2002, 25 military exercises involving US forces have taken place. Last February 2009, 6,000 US soldiers arrived in the country and joined 2,000 Filipino soldiers for a military exercise.

The armed forces insist that such exercises are purely socio-civic missions. But a Muslim woman whose husband was killed during a recent military operation in Muslim Mindanao attested that she saw a “Kano” (slang for American) during the operation.

The documented abuse of foreign troops in the country includes the rape of a 22-year-old Filipina two years ago. While the case involved four US soldiers, only one was convicted due to lack of evidence against the other three suspects. The vigilance of women’s organizations has pressured the government to take the case seriously. However, the convict was placed under the US embassy’s custody in violation of the VFA which stipulates that US soldiers who violate Philippine laws while in the country should be placed under Philippine jurisdiction. He was eventually acquitted after reaching a settlement with the victim and immediately flew back to the US.

Women’s Fear and Insecurity

As the Philippine government rationalizes the existence of HSA, the Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) conducted a survey among 1,212 women aged 18 and above to find out if Filipino women feel threatened by terrorism and if they feel the need for additional legislation to make them secure. The respondents were randomly chosen from 3,217,228 women in the National Capital Region (NCR) based on the 2000 national census. Most of them were relatively young: 26.2% were aged 18-25; 20.9%, 26-33; and 18.3%, 34-41. The survey, consisting of seven questions, was conducted in September 7-23, 2007, with -/+3 margin of error at 95% confidence level.

According to the survey results:

Majority of the women respondents (60%) do not consider the HSA as the solution to the “terrorist” problem in the Philippines.

Majority do not consider terrorism as a threat; rather, the absence of food, jobs, and social services are the major threats in their lives.

Majority do not fully understand nor appreciate the government’s war against terrorism.

21% believe that Muslims are the instigators of violence and terrorism, reflecting the influence of media and other institutions.

15.7% do not have any idea or cannot tell or name any terrorist group while 10.3% are reluctant to say who the terrorists are.

8.8% identify communists as instigators of terrorism; 7.7% believe that invading foreigners are the terrorists; 6.8% consider the Arroyo government itself as terrorist, and 5.4% deem anyone who is in the political opposition terrorist.

The survey results have guided women organizers and leaders in identifying appropriate steps for human and women’s rights advocacy.

Excerpt from a paper presented to the Workshop on Women and War, Asia Pacific Research Network, June 17, 2008, Hongkong, SAR