Peasant families near the border between Abra and Ilocos Sur were displaced after bombings by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) on April 2, an organization of women farmers reported on Friday.
The bombings near the border of Brgy. Nagcanasan, Pilar, Abra and Brgy. Gapang, Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur displaced 118 families and affected the livelihood of 212 families, according to Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women.
While the AFP claims that the bombings happened following a clash between the New People’s Army and the 501st Infantry Brigade of the Philippine Army, the Communist Party of the Philippines has not yet verified the said clash.
"[President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s] administration and the AFP continue to carelessly and cruelly put civilian lives in danger through indiscriminate aerial bombings. They openly show us that their military counterinsurgency operations matter more to them than the lives of Filipino citizens," said Amihan National Chairperson Zenaida Soriano.
Intensified Violations
The bombing is the most recent in the 22,391 recorded incidents of bombing under the Marcos administration, according to the 2023 year-end report of human rights group Karapatan.
“The indiscriminate bombings by the AFP cause massive physical and economic displacement, and wreak havoc on farmlands, which are the main source of livelihood of the majority of the peasant population in the Philippines,” Karapatan wrote in its year-end report.
Aside from bombings, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances have disproportionately affected peasant communities, and are concentrated in rural regions such as Bicol and Western Visayas (see sidebars 1 and 2).
Violations of civil and political rights have intensified under Marcos’s term (see sidebar 3), with the number of reported cases of enforced disappearances, illegal search and seizures, demolitions, harassment and intimidation, and indiscriminate firing either on pace to surpass or have already surpassed the number of cases over the entirety of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s term.
Karapatan also reported that the state violated several of its own laws and international standards with its abductions and torture operations, citing the case of environmental activists Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano.
Castro and Tamano in September last year alleged that they were abducted by the military and forced to sign a surrender affidavit during a press conference organized by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.
They have since been given protection orders by the Supreme Court in October 2023, but the Department of Justice charged them with grave oral defamation for supposedly embarrassing the AFP.
Illegal Arrests, Inhumane Prisons
Aside from forced surrenders, the government also conducted illegal arrests and detentions, charging activists with trumped-up cases of murder or illegal possession of firearms, Karapatan reported. Because these cases are nonbailable, the government can detain them while on trial.
While the number of illegal arrests and detentions also dropped from 1,341 under Duterte to only 122 under Marcos, the percentage of those arrested who have stayed in prison has increased. This brings the current number of political prisoners in the country to 786, with 96 of these prisoners being sickly and 94 being elderly.
These prisoners languish in poorly managed prisons that have significantly higher death rates than what is internationally accepted. Just recently, farmer-activist Generoso Gozo Granado died on March 8 from a heart attack, partly due to poor conditions in the New Bilibid Prison.
“On the one hand, [Marcos] presents a carefully cultivated ‘presidential’ image … In reality, Marcos remains accountable as commander-in-chief for numerous other rights violations with victims that run up to the millions,” Karapatan wrote. ●
First published in the April 8, 2024 print edition of the Collegian.
