RP Accepts US offer to help solve killings (tags)
The Philippines police will accept technical assistance from the United States to help solve a wave of political murders targeting mostly leftist dissidents, a senior police official said Wednesday. Malacañang, however, was more guarded on the issue. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita told reporters the government wants to be “more deliberate.” Ermita said Philippine and US officials are “in contact with each other” but that no decision has been made. A special United Nations Human Rights Commission rapporteur last week alleged that that some in the Armed Forces—one of the most powerful institutions in the country—were behind the unsolved killings, which human-rights groups have said numbered in the hundreds since 2001.
RP wants US help in routing communists (tags)
The Philippine government will welcome US counterinsurgency assistance against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA), Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said on Thursday. Ermita hinted at growing US involvement in the Philippines’ internal security affairs while discussing the coming joint Balikatan war games in Jolo. Interviewed after his sendoff of President Arroyo, who left Thursday morning for Davos, Switzerland, Ermita said the Chief Executive is glad that both counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns are “moving forward, very smoothly.”
US-Arroyo Regime Beat a Retreat : Stop Con-ass now (tags)
President Macapagal-Arroyo, sensing grave political fall-out from her manuverings, had instructed her political affairs adviser Gabriel Claudio on Friday to “order” the lawmakers allied with her to drop the constituent assembly (Con-ass) as a means of changing the Constitution, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said yesterday.
Sison expulsion easier with death repeal - Palace (tags)
The true intentions of the US-Arroyo regime is coming out. Executve Secretary Ermita has let the cat out of the bag--WITH the abolition of the death penalty Malacañang sees better chances of persuading The Netherlands to deport exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Ma. Sison. Executive Eduardo Ermita made the statement as communist guerrillas urged the government to respect the civil rights of their comrades targeted by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's revitalized two-year counter-insurgency campaign. Citing conversations with an official of the Dutch embassy here, who he did not name, Ermita said the only real stumbling block to Sison’s expulsion from The Netherlands was the death penalty. Meanwhile, Luis Jalandoni, chairman of the National Democratic Front peace panel, called on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and “all organizations which uphold human rights and international humanitarian law” to “hold the Arroyo regime accountable” for the alleged abduction by government troops of an NDF consultant and his son earlier this month. Jalandoni accused the government of “crimes against humanity,” claiming it was responsible for “more than 180 enforced disappearances, more than 690 extra-judicial killings of unarmed civilians and frustrated killings of more than 200 civilian victims.”