Local News 9

Mango's Local News and Info

Archive 9

July 2003 - December 2003

Note: These articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the Management, Staff and Employees of Mango's.

Philippines Arrest Two U.S. Brothers
By HRVOJE HRANJSKI
Associated Press Writer
December 31, 2003

MANILA, Philippines (AP)--Philippine authorities said Monday that they have arrested two American brothers for suspected links to terrorism, as the country remained on alert over the reported presence of foreign Muslim militants in the south.

Michael Ray Stubbs and his brother James, a convert to Islam, have been held at an undisclosed location since they were arrested earlier this month in the town of Tanza in Cavite province, 21 miles southwest of Manila, an immigration official said on condition of anonymity.

The official said the brothers were of Middle Eastern origin but gave no other details. The authorities did not disclose the exact charges the men could face or provide details about their alleged links to terrorism. Their hometowns were not available and the U.S. Embassy could not immediately be reached for comment. More information was expected to be released Tuesday.

The arrests came as the government warned earlier this month that Indonesian members of the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah have been training Filipino rebels in bomb-making and other tactics in the south of the country. Jemaah Islamiyah, which has links to al-Qaida, is suspected of several terror attacks, including last year's Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

Philippine authorities say the group was involved in a series of December 2000 bombings that killed 22 people and injured more than 100 in the capital, Manila. Since then, police and military forces have increased the security at ports, airports, train stations and other public places. The Philippines previously has detained and deported foreigners on suspicion of terrorism.

In September, a Jordanian national, Mahmoud Afif Abdeljalil - believed to be a close associate of Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law--was arrested in the southern city of Zamboanga on charges of having an expired visa. After he was interrogated, he was ordered deported. The previous year, immigration officials deported two Jordanian men, also suspected of having links to terrorists, after failing to find enough evidence to prosecute them.

Payumo, Gordon conflict turns into 'streamer war'
By Allan Macatuno
Inquirer News Service
December 31, 2003

OLONGAPO CITY -- The rift between Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority chairman Felicito Payumo and Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon over the proposed Subic port development project continues to heat up as supporters of both officials started to resort to a "streamer war."

Streamers hurling derogatory words and calling each camp names were hung along the streets in this city and the entrance of the Subic Bay freeport.

The U.S. Government today, acting through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), donated an additional 7.8 million pesos to the Philippine National Red Cross to further assist the victims of flashfloods and landslides in Southern Leyte and the Caraga Region of Mindanao. These funds will be used to provide 96 core shelter units, four deep water wells for emergency water supply, and various support costs targeted to Southern Leyte, one of the hardest hit of the affected areas. Some 28,000 families in Southern Leyte are affected by the disaster, according to the Philippine National Red funds that the U.S. Government donated to the Philippine National Red Cross for relief efforts to 10.5 million pesos.

OLONGAPO CITY -- Except for a few fireworks, residents here celebrated a silent and literally dark Christmas when a power outage hit several areas of the city starting December 24. Power supply in the city was cut at about 6 p.m. on Wednesday, spoiling preparations for noche buena and cutting short the residents' last-minute Christmas shopping.

The city's public utility department (PUD) was swamped with complaints from residents who expressed dismay over the power outage that occurred on Christmas Eve. Luisito Lopez, PUD technical consultant, said a transmission failure that occurred in the PUD's substation in front of the Kale Beach caused the power outage that also hit nearby towns of Zambales.

He said a power transformer in the compound of the National Power Corp. was damaged, resulting in a sudden blackout in Olongapo City and in the towns of Subic, Castillejos, San Marcelino, San Antonio, San Narciso, San Felipe and Cabangan.

Power was restored in the eight towns of Zambales and few areas of Olongapo after 30 minutes on Wednesday, but a large portion of this city was left without electricity until Friday afternoon. Lopez said the broken part of the transformer was not available in the city and nearby provinces. He said they needed to wait for a replacement part from Davao City.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) yesterday provided over 2.7 million pesos to the Philippine National Red Cross as part of the U. S. government’s assistance to the families and victims of the recent landslides and flashfloods in the provinces of Surigao, Agusan and Southern Leyte. The funds, provided under the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, will be used to support disaster relief operations in the affected areas.

In addition, a C-130 helicopter from the Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group (JUSMAG) is scheduled to deliver 100 cases of ready-to-eat meals (MREs), two pallets of basic medical supplies, plastic sheetings, blankets, dried noodles and 1,200 pairs of shoes to the affected areas. The U.S. Embassy community in the Philippines and the American Women’s Club of the Philippines will also send donations of cash and clothing.

Speaking before media at Villamor Air Base in Manila, accompanied by Red Cross Manager of Disaster Management Services James Y. Sian and USAID Country Director Michael J. Yates, Ambassador Ricciardone offered expressions of great regret and sympathy on behalf of President Bush and the American people for the victims and their families living in the affected communities. The U.S. was not only expressing its sympathy for those families adversely affected by the natural disaster, the Ambassador noted, but was also focused on providing this immediate, emergency assistance in support of the 5,000 Filipino families living in the disaster-stricken areas.

Ambassador Francis Ricciardone and USAID Director Michael Yates joined President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in visiting the affected areas this morning to determine additional assistance that the U.S. could provide to help alleviate the conditions of over 16,000 families affected by the landslides and flashfloods in Surigao del Sur, Surigao del Norte, Agusan Norte and Southern Leyte.

US Aid urged for Muslide Victims
Philippines President Gloria Arroyo has asked the US to help in rescue efforts following massive landslides
BBC News
December 22, 2003

About 120 people are still missing, but local rescue helicopters are grounded by heavy rain and troops have to walk because roads are strewn with debris. About 200 people are feared dead in the mudslides thought to have been caused, in part, by illegal logging.

US Chinook helicopters that can operate in torrential rain could fly from US bases in Okinawa, Japan. President Arroyo told disaster response officials to speed up rescue operations at an emergency meeting in the capital, Manila. She added that she had asked the US to provide assistance in the form of helicopters, personnel and relief goods.

Defence Secretary Eduardo Ermita said affected towns were now isolated and roads are covered by mud. "It is difficult to reach these areas," he said. "Soldiers are trying to reach some areas by foot." Television showed pictures of desperate efforts by relatives to uncover those missing, while rescuers described digging up bodies of entire families buried together under the mud.

"This is the worst experience we have had in years", said Rosette Lerias, the governor of southern Leyte province, the worst affected region. She said cutting down trees from the slopes above settlements had loosened the soil. The municipalities of San Francisco, Liloan and Maasain in southern Leyte have been particularly badly hit, while other casualties were reported in the Agusan and Surigao areas of neighboring Mindanao island.

An official there quoted survivors as saying they heard a great noise from the mountains, and that shortly afterwards a current of mud swept down on top of them. "We really have no idea of the magnitude of the disaster," Governor Lerias said. On Mindanao island to the south, at least 16 people were killed.

200 feared dead in Philippines mudslides
By Luz Baguioro
Straits Times Philippine Correspondent
December 22, 2003

MANILA - Rain, mud and floodwaters hampered rescue efforts in the central Philippines yesterday where up to 200 people were feared dead following massive flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rains over the past week. Officials fear the final fatality count could rise further.

'I just came from a very, very depressing site,' Ms Rosette Lerias, governor of Leyte province, said late yesterday after visiting the devastated mountainside village of Punta. She said Punta was a picture of mayhem, with more than half of its 83 houses either destroyed or buried under huge mounds of earth, debris and coconut trees. 'There was mud all over, you couldn't see anything but rooftops with the houses submerged in mud. There's debris, wood, old clothes, kitchen utensils strewn all around... in one spot they dug up the hand of a child.'

Rescuers interviewed on television described digging up bodies of entire families, including a mother embracing her children. There were however some miraculous survival stories. Ms Lerias said an 89-year-old man and a 14-year-old girl were dug up alive after being buried late Friday. They appeared to have survived because of an air pocket, she said.

President Gloria Arroyo has already appealed to the United States to send in Chinook helicopters, all-weather troop and cargo carriers, to help in the rescue efforts. She told reporters the helicopters may arrive from their base in Okinawa, Japan, in a couple of days. She did not go ahead with a plan to travel to Leyte, about 640km south-east of Manila, after officials warned the trip would be very risky. 'I'm deeply saddened that the tragedy struck them amidst Christmas,' she said.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council said 83 bodies had been dug out from their muddy graves in southern Leyte province, and 123 others were still missing. About 8,000 people in Leyte and in the northern part of Mindanao had been rescued and housed in school buildings, officials said. But Ms Lerias said rescuers were still trying to reach people in remote areas. 'The roads are impassable. Rescuers are trying to reach far-flung areas on foot or by motorboats,' she said, adding power and telephone lines were down in many areas.

Defence Secretary Eduardo Ermita said about 700 army troops had been sent to help police and civilian volunteers in the search and rescue operations. Some experts have blamed illegal logging and massive deforestation for the disaster, saying the absence of trees reduced the water-holding capability of mountain slopes, leading to mudslides. In a similar disaster in 1991 in Ormoc, a city in Leyte, more than 8,000 people were killed in landslides and floods caused by a typhoon. The bodies of many of them were never found.

Two foreigners rapped for child abuse 'vanish'
By Ria Isidro-de Fiesta
December 18, 2003

CAMP OLIVAS -- Two foreigners - an Australian and a British – currently facing charges of child abuse and violation of the anti-pornography law in Angeles City courts, respectively, seemed to have "vanished," police reports said. Police said George Terence Matthews, reportedly a retired military officer and native of Sydney, Australia, disappeared after posting a P230,000 surety bail for violation of the Child Abuse Law.

Matthews was arrested by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in November last year during a raid at the Fantastic Bar, which he owned. NBI agents, during the raid, found girls with ages ranging from 13 to 17 dancing nude on stage.

Matthews and his live-in partner, identified as a certain Editha Racquel, were taken to the NBI regional office and subsequently brought to the Angeles City court for the filing of a case against them. The rescued girls were taken to the Social Welfare Development Office in Angeles City.

On the other hand, lawmen pursuing Barry Edmond Edwards, a British national and reportedly a retired professor of a prestigious university in London, are having difficulty locating him after he was freed from detention in Angeles City. Edwards was accused of violating the anti-pornography law after police found videotapes of nude young girls having sexual intercourse with him. A warrant of arrest has been issued against him but he has so far eluded arrest.

Arroyo not most popular, but still the one to beat
By Luz Baguioro
Straits Times Philippine Correspondent
December 16, 2003

MANILA - The registration of candidates for what is expected to be a hotly-contested presidential election opened yesterday with President Gloria Arroyo emerging as the front runner in a four-horse race. Although she ranks third or fourth in opinion surveys, analysts say her bid for a fresh six-year term could get a boost from a rift in the opposition.

'She is still the one to beat,' said Mr Gladstone Cuarteros, an analyst at the Institute for Popular Democracy. 'It's the equity of the incumbent. She has control of the machinery and the resources and, being the incumbent, is more prominent than her opponents because she is in the news every day.'

Opposition stalwart Aquilino Pimentel has warned that Mrs Arroyo will benefit from a split in the opposition ticket. Actor Fernando Poe Jr, 64, and Senator Panfilo Lacson, 55, are competing against each other to lead the opposition challenge.

But after Mr Lacson declared his intention to run for the presidency on Nov 26, the Philippine currency and the stock market plunged to historical lows. Mr Poe also has yet to accept the nomination of a coalition of opposition parties or to discuss his platform.

Mr Lacson, who is often at the tail-end of popularity polls, indicated yesterday he would finish his Senate term if he was not picked as the opposition standard-bearer. Analysts, however, reckon that Mrs Arroyo will get the stiffest challenge from veteran legislator Raul Roco, her estranged political ally. Mr Roco, 62, was dismissed as education minister last year in the wake of corruption allegations.

'They have the same constituents, which are the youth and the middle class. So expect Roco to whittle away votes from Arroyo,' political science professor Benito Lim said. Although he has an almost cult-like following among millions of poor Filipinos, Mr Poe's candidacy has triggered fears of a repeat of the disastrous, short-lived presidency of his friend Joseph Estrada.

'Those pushing strongly for his candidacy are the same people who surrounded Mr Estrada. The cast of characters is the same. So it's likely you will get the same kind of performance,' said Mr Guillermo Luz, executive director of the Makati Business Club.

A victory for Mrs Arroyo will settle once and for all questions about her legitimacy dogging her since she took over from Mr Estrada, who was forced to step down by a popular revolt in 2001. She also had limited success in grappling with the country's long-running problems of poverty, unemployment and corruption.

Those aiming to run for some 12,500 posts in the Senate, the House of Representatives and local government have until Jan 2 to file their certificates of candidacy. Five independent candidates for the presidency registered with the Commission on Elections yesterday, but top contenders are likely to wait for the eleventh hour to avoid rules against premature campaigning, commission chairman Benjamin Abalos said.

Although formal campaigning will start only in February, most aspirants, including Mrs Arroyo, have been accused of courting voters since early this year. Mrs Arroyo paid a brief visit to Hong Kong on Sunday to talk to Filipino migrant workers. The visit sparked accusations that she was campaigning at taxpayers' expense.

She then proceeded to Bahrain for a two-day state visit where she is also expected to seek the support of Filipino workers there. An estimated 7.5 million Filipino migrant workers, comprising 10 per cent of the electorate, will be allowed to vote for the first time.

PORAC -- After 12 years, people of this town can stop throwing invectives at the government. This as President Arroyo ordered the Mount Pinatubo Emergency-Project Management Office (MPE-PMO) to hasten the construction of the Mancatian bridge crossing the Pasig-Potrero River here.

MPE-PMO project director Emil K. Sadain said the president issued the order amid the growing clamor from non-government organizations and local government officials for the immediate construction of the bridge. The span was totally destroyed at the height of lahar flows soon after the Pinatubo eruption in the early '90s.

Sadain said the project, which includes the improvement of approaches and the 270-meter concrete span, was delayed due to shortage of funds.

Due to the continuous delay, the people directly affected by the damaged bridge grew restive, bringing them to the brink of staging rallies to call the government's attention. The enraged residents, mostly of this town, were only pacified by Father Resty Lumanlan, resident priest. He reportedly asked the residents to be patient while they are looking for other avenues to air their sentiments to the national leaders.

Lumanlan was the co-founder of the Foundation for Lingap Kapampangans Inc. or FLKI (formerly Save Pampanga Movement) who urged then president Fidel V. Ramos to save the province from lahar by constructing the multibillion-peso megadike.

Sadain said the MPE-PMO, tasked by its mother department - the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) - proposed that the bridge be included in the second phase of the foreign-funded Pinatubo Hazard Urgent Mitigation Project (PHUMP II).

This, MPE-PMO officials said, is since the government incurred savings from other projects. Scheduled in Package Seven of Phump II, the bridge got a funding of more than P339 million and is originally estimated complete by April 23, 2005. However, Sadain said Public works Sec. Florante Soriquez ordered for a "crash" plan be formulated to make the bridge passable in half the original timeframe. The plan also aims at completing the bridge before the rainy seasons.

Sadain said the project contractor, China International Waters and Electricity Co. (CIWEC), has engineered a 24-hour work shifts for its more than 150 workers to further speed up the construction. So far, works for the bridge is estimated to be 20 percent ahead of schedule, Sadain bared.

MANILA (Reuters) - Reacting to public anger over a wave of kidnappings, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo lifted a moratorium on the death penalty Friday, opening the way for executions to resume in January. The move follows a series of kidnappings targeting the ethnic Chinese community that have added to the perception that Arroyo's government is failing to curb rampant crime.

It also risks alienating her supporters within the powerful Roman Catholic Church ahead of elections next May. ``I shall no longer stand in the way of executions scheduled by the courts for January 2004,'' Arroyo said in a statement. ``Much as I am averse, as a matter of moral principle, to the taking of human lives in this manner, the president must yield to the higher public interest when dictated by extraordinary circumstances.''

The decision to lift the moratorium she imposed in October 2002 comes only days after Arroyo rejected calls from the Filipino-Chinese community to reimpose capital punishment, saying an effective criminal justice system was the key to fighting crime. The recent kidnapping spree came to public attention on November 18 when the body of a Chinese-Filipino executive with Coca-Cola Export Corporation, Betty Sy, was found wrapped in a blanket and garbage bag in a Manila suburb.

Three days later, a 10-year-old girl was abducted outside her school in Manila. Earlier this week, armed kidnappers snatched a two-year-old ethnic Chinese boy on his way to a Manila nursery school. The girl was later freed after her family paid a ransom.

Leaders of the Chinese community, which makes up just one percent of the 82 million population but is prominent in the business world, have said rogue members of the security forces are involved and criticized the government's response as ineffective. They say many kidnappings go unreported because families do not trust the police.

``I think the Chinese-Filipino community will welcome the move,'' said Joaquin Sy, head of a Chinese community group. ``The criminals -- the kidnappers, bank robbers -- are more brazen now, so the state should adopt tougher measures.''

Arroyo has wavered over her support for the death penalty because of her strong links to the Catholic Church, whose support was key in the ouster of president Joseph Estrada in January 2001 and her installation as his successor. Following the Church line, she has opposed calls for stricter birth control to slow the country's rapid population growth.

But the death penalty moratorium has risked making her seem soft on crime in the run-up to next year's election as she trails behind several rivals in early opinion polls. The perception of lawless streets has also deterred sorely needed foreign investment and tourism. ``It is not the mode of punishment that will eradicate crime,'' said Loretta Ann Rosales, a Congresswoman and anti-death penalty campaigner.

``Is it possible that it is the inability of the administration to address criminality that is worsening? That could be the extraordinary situation she (Arroyo) was referring to.'' A day rarely goes by without a new gruesome crime reported in newspapers and fresh speculation that criminal activity is on the rise as politicians try to build up their campaign war chests.

The Philippine Star reported Friday that police had detained two men for the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl. The shocking case only made it onto page 20.

Vigilante killings alarm Philippines citizens
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post
November 30, 2003

DAVAO CITY, Philippines -- Clarita Alia has visited the San Pedro public cemetery every week for the last two years. From evening until dawn, she camps beside the graves of her two teen-age boys, stabbed to death a year earlier in separate attacks. When her 14-year-old son, Bobby, was released from jail last year after being suspected of petty theft, she immediately took him to call on his brothers. She warned Bobby to be on his guard or he might soon join them. Two nights later, he did.

As Bobby got on a motorcycle after leaving a karaoke club, a short man in a black jacket and jeans buried a hunting knife in his back, Clarita recalled, citing witness accounts. Bobby got off the bike to flee but was stabbed again in the right shoulder. He scrambled for nearly a quarter-mile through a marketplace, clutching his shoulder to stanch the bleeding, before he stumbled over a chair and collapsed.

Like his brothers, Bobby was swept up in a wave of unsolved killings in Davao. In the first nine months of this year there were 94 such killings, according to figures compiled by a coalition of human rights, legal and children's advocacy groups. Since 1999 there have been more than 200 and only one prosecution. The murders have terrorized the poor here in the largest city in the southern Philippines. But local officials say they are untroubled by the killings, which they say have made Davao a safer city for tourists.

"I don't mind us being called the murder capital of the Philippines as long as those being killed are the bad guys," said Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, dubbed the "Dirty Harry of Davao" by the public. "From Day One, I said henceforth Davao city will be very, very dangerous for criminals. I've been telling criminals it's a place where you can die any time. If that's a cue for anybody, that's fine."

Davao police attribute the murders to personal grudges between criminals and to gang violence. Many residents, however, say they think a death squad is operating with the blessing of local officials, targeting suspected drug peddlers, pickpockets and other petty thieves. Duterte said in an interview that he did not know who was committing the murders, and he took responsibility for the lack of prosecutions. "I'm more interested in solving crimes against innocent people. I'm not at all interested in the killings of criminals, especially people involved with drugs," he said.

During his tenure, government officials said, the local crime rate has fallen, making Davao one of the safest major cities in the Philippines and winning it national plaudits. The city police department was honored last year by the national police commission as the country's top force. Duterte has been tapped by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as her special adviser on peace and order. The vigilante killings are quietly cheered by local businessmen. "The criminals are being eliminated one by one," said Romeo Serra, president of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Edmundo Acaylar, the city tourism officer, added that the murders have made this coastal city of 1.1 million a safer vacation destination. "I call it the process of expurgation. Whoever is doing it, I say very good and thank you," he said. The dead are nearly all from the slums of Davao, a city where about a third of the families live below the official subsistence level. The young victims are often drawn from the growing ranks of street children, almost always dropouts who have left school to help their parents scrape out a living or to join gangs.

"This is a systematic, dramatic effort to eliminate the undesirables in society," said Bernie Mondragon, coordinator of the Kabataan Consortium of children's advocacy groups. The killers frequently work in pairs, one acting as the assassin and the other as lookout, according to human rights groups and children's advocates. They sometimes dress in black, with caps partly hiding their faces, and often ride a motorcycle without a license plate.

"Now it seems that every crime deserves the death penalty. Even petty crimes are punishable by death, based on the justice system of these vigilantes," said Carlos T. Zarate, head of the Davao chapter of the Philippine bar association, which has condemned the killings. "We believe the Davao death squad is financed and protected by forces that are coming from the state itself, either the local government or the local police," said Ariel Casilao, a leader of the Coalition Against Summary Executions. He added, "Whenever the mayor declares war on criminality, bodies are found on the street."

Clarita Alia, 48, a mother of seven whose skin has grown dark and tough from pushing a vegetable cart seven days a week in the city's main market, recalled that the police had come looking for her son Richard, 18, one night in July 2001. They accused him of robbery and assault but had no arrest warrant. "You can't take my son," she told them. The officers elbowed her aside, threatening her with arrest. But they did not take Richard. Clarita urged her son to leave town.

Two weeks later, as Richard was returning to the neighborhood, he stopped for a beer. When he stepped outside the cafe to urinate, two burly men jumped him, Clarita said, citing witness accounts. They punched him in the face and then stabbed him to death. Christopher Alia, 16, died three months later. He had recently found work as a barker on a minibus after spending time in jail for sniffing glue. Like Richard, he was stabbed with a butcher's knife.

Then there was Bobby. He had been jailed twice last year, once for carrying a knife and once on suspicion of stealing a cell phone. A brief police report confirms the basic details of the three murders. Chief Inspector Matthew Perlas Baccay, commander of the San Pedro precinct, said in an interview that the police investigation had stalled because of a lack of evidence, adding that the deaths likely resulted from a dispute between youth gangs. But social workers familiar with the Alia cases rejected this explanation.

Clarita is terrified that the violence is not over. Last month, she said, a stranger in a karaoke bar warned her that another son, Arnold, 25, would be next, ominously running an index finger across his throat as he said the name. Arnold has gone into hiding. The grandson constantly in Clarita's arms is Arnold's child. A day after Clarita stoically recounted the saga of her sons in an interview, she took the baby on her weekly visit to the hilltop San Pedro cemetery. She made her way past the larger compounds of wrought iron and marble at the front, to the farthest reaches on the back slope. There, where the grave sites are packed so tight that it's almost impossible to navigate between them, she stepped nimbly from tomb to concrete tomb, grandchild in her arms, until she reached the resting place of her sons.

Their three tombs were stacked one atop another under a makeshift corrugated metal roof. Clarita lit three long, yellow candles and placed them on the unfinished tomb. Then, finally, she wept. "If my sons were guilty, they should have been charged in court. And if they were jailed, I would have accepted it because that would have been according to the law," she said, tears streaking her skin. She tapped the tomb with her fingers, softly. "I don't want my fourth child to die."

Poe says he will run for president in 2004
By Lira Dalangin-Fernandez
INQ7.net with Agence France-Presse
November 26, 2003

MOVIE actor Fernando Poe Jr., an ally of deposed president Joseph Estrada, finally declared on Wednesday his candidacy for president in 2004, ending months of speculation on his political plans.

"Ako si Fernando Poe Jr. na lalahok sa pagka-pangulo (I am Fernando Poe Jr. who will run for president)," Poe announced amid the chanting of his supporters who included most of his colleagues in the movie industry.

"In the life of a person, the day will come when he has to face the toughest decision of his life, and that day for me has come," said Poe, 64, popularly known as "FPJ."

Al Qaeda Affiliate Training Indonesians On Philippine Island Persistence Startles Officials in Manila
By Alan Sipress and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
November 17, 2003

COTABATO CITY, Philippines -- A regional terrorist network linked to al Qaeda has continued to train its militants in the southern Philippines, aided by local Muslim separatists, police and intelligence sources said. The militants, all Indonesians, are training at a camp established three years ago and now operating under the protection of rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, according to intelligence sources and a summary of the interrogation of Taufiq Rifqi, an Indonesian militant who was captured here last month.

Rifqi's testimony startled Philippine officials, who assumed they had deprived al Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah, of its primary training ground three years ago when government soldiers overran its base. It also raises the stakes for peace talks aimed at ending the 31-year insurgency on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Diplomatic and security sources said a peace deal could close Mindanao as a vital center for the training and transit of foreign terrorists -- what a Western official in Manila called "a kind of Afghanistan east."

Within three weeks of Rifqi's arrest, police backed by military forces raided two safe houses that contained handwritten notes in Indonesian on making biological weapons, diagrams of amateur rockets, components for jury-rigging explosives and other documents and bomb-making materials.

The capture of Rifqi, who security officials said was Jemaah Islamiah's treasurer and logistics chief in the Philippines and arrived in Mindanao in 1998, was a wake-up call for the government, which had been "in denial about the existence of Jemaah Islamiah in Mindanao," a Philippine intelligence official said. "We are open in saying that the Jemaah Islamiah is a major threat," Defense Secretary Eduardo R. Ermita said in an interview. "We know the Philippines is a good target for their activities."

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Asian and Western intelligence officials have unearthed extensive details about the operations of al Qaeda's Southeast Asian affiliate. Under interrogation, suspects have described a geographic division of labor in which Indonesia serves as the primary theater for attacks -- two nightclubs on the resort island of Bali were bombed a year ago and the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, the capital, was hit in August. The Philippines was designated as the main training ground.

Until 1995, Southeast Asian terrorists were training in Muslim mujaheddin camps in Afghanistan, but Jemaah Islamiah's leaders decided to seek a location closer to home. Hundreds of militants, mainly Indonesians, slipped into the Philippines by fishing boat and other vessels through unregulated borders and trained at the main Moro Islamic Liberation Front camp. That site was destroyed by government troops during an offensive in mid-2000.

What officials did not know was that a new camp -- Jabal Qubah -- was set up almost immediately. Rifqi told interrogators that groups of 15 to 20 Indonesians have been attending 18-month training courses at the new site on the forested slopes of Mount Cararao in Maguindanao province, according to the interrogation summary and intelligence officials. There, in a few huts, Indonesian instructors have been teaching Indonesian recruits how to build bombs, fire weapons and read maps. Physical training and religious studies are part of the program.

The camp, several hours' walking distance from a Philippine rebel base, has operated under the protection of a rebel commander, identified by an intelligence official as Gordon Syaifullah. The training weapons were provided by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front forces, according to the interrogation. Jemaah Islamiah members in Indonesia financed the camp by transferring money through ATMs.

Including the instructors, about 30 militants -- all Indonesians – have been training at the site, Rifqi told investigators. "Our intelligence tells us because they know the military is on their trail, some may have left," said Ermita, the defense secretary. He added that about 20 Indonesian militants from several locations had fled the country in recent weeks, leaving about 30. Indonesian police agree that militants who trained in the Philippines have been returning to Indonesia.

Although security officials said they had learned of no specific attack planned for the Philippines, they were worried about the prospect of a bombing in the period from the current month of Ramadan through Christmas and New Year's. In December 2000, 22 people died in Manila in a series of blasts that police later attributed to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Jemaah Islamiah. Rifqi coordinated logistics for those attacks, a senior police official said.

Military commanders in Mindanao are planning a strike against the camp, security officials said. But senior Philippine officials, concerned that this could disrupt a four-month-old cease-fire with the rebels and undermine peace talks, have yet to approve the operation. Any offensive "should be surgical and not shotgun. There's something very important to protect here. That's the peace process," said a Philippine military official.

Rebel leaders deny that their forces are providing sanctuary to Jemaah Islamiah militants. "These foreign terrorists are like worms and nobody likes to be infected by worms. We have nothing to do with it," Ghazali Jaafar, vice chairman for political affairs for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, said in an interview here. He added, "How can we control every inch of land in Mindanao?"

More to the point, Philippine and Western officials say, is that the Front's leadership cannot control all its local commanders, some of whom maintain ties with Indonesian militants. The Front's chairman, Al Haj Murad, is struggling to consolidate his authority after replacing Hashim Salamat, who died after a heart attack in July, Philippine and Western officials said.

In fact, Murad had ordered his followers to evict all Jemaah Islamiah militants from the training camp, a Philippine intelligence official said. But Murad lacks the organizational and religious standing of Salamat, who was an Islamic scholar trained in Egypt, officials said.

Ermita, the defense secretary, said of the report that the rebels had disassociated themselves from the terrorists: "We take that with a grain of salt. It seems the local commander doesn't believe in negotiations and doesn't necessarily follow orders from Haji Murad."

Security officials point to mixed signals being sent by the rebels. They said a commander in Lanao del Sur province in Mindanao gave sanctuary to the fugitive Jemaah Islamiah bomb-making expert Fathur Rahman Ghozi after he escaped from a Manila prison in July. But security officials said that rebel sources also provided information to the government about Ghozi's whereabouts before he was tracked down and shot dead by security forces in Mindanao last month.

A Philippine intelligence official also confirmed that Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, Jemaah Islamiah's operations chief arrested in Thailand in August, told his U.S. interrogators that he had sent money to a Moro Islamic Liberation Front contact a month earlier for an attack in the Philippines. But the intelligence official warned that Hambali might have been lying.

Ermita said the Philippine government was preparing to provide rebel leaders with a list of criminals and Indonesian terrorists believed to be in areas under their control. Under an agreement last year, the Front is required to "neutralize, interdict and isolate" so-called lawless elements.

Negotiators from both sides are awaiting a final round of exploratory discussions in Malaysia that would set the date and agenda for formal peace talks. Philippine officials would like to secure an agreement before presidential elections in May. As an incentive, the U.S. government has promised development aid for Mindanao if the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has disavowed terrorism, also ends its armed insurgency.

About 300 U.S. troops are in the southern Philippines training local forces in counterterrorism. The United States proposed earlier this year to send 3,000 troops to the area to help eliminate the Abu Sayyaf, a smaller Muslim militant group designated by the State Department as a foreign terrorist organization. But that plan stalled after opponents said it violated a constitutional ban on foreign combat troops on Philippine soil.

Philippines: Between democracy and disaster
By Marco Garrido
http://www.atimes.com
Southeast Asia
November 13, 2003

Not without the faintest grimace did Filipinos receive US President George W Bush's fulsome praise of Philippine democracy. Bush hailed "the first democratic nation in Asia" as an inspiration, "a light to all of Asia and beyond", when he addressed the Philippine Congress last month. And not without irony did Filipinos mark his words - "All of you in this chamber are the protectors of Philippine democracy" - which, had Bush been more canny, might have been an admonishment as much as it was a commendation.

But if it was, it went unheeded. No sooner had the Great White Father conferred his benediction than the institutions of Philippine democracy returned to feasting on themselves. Bush's visit had interrupted one scandal, a congressional assault on the executive, and was swiftly followed by another, a congressional assault on the judiciary. The target in the first case was the non-person Jose Pidal; the target in the second is an equally unlikely figure, a man whose integrity was heretofore considered unimpeachable, Chief Justice Hilario Davide.

Now Davide finds himself the subject of an impeachment complaint that seems all politics and no substance. Accused mainly of "technical malversion", diverting a portion of the Judicial Development Fund (JDF) allotted to judicial employees to Supreme Court appurtenances (cars, expensive chairs, summer-session cottages), the charges against Davide have distended to include "malfeasance", "breach of public trust", and "thoughtless extravagance". The complaint has prospered despite having been railroaded through the House, despite the Commission on Audit having already found the funds to have been properly used, and despite a constitutional prohibition against impeaching the same official twice within a year (the first complaint against Davide had been filed by former president Joseph Estrada for the chief justice's "illegal participation" in the swearing-in of current President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo). The complaint has prospered, despite the law and normative procedure, because of politics.

Its sponsors and most of the 87 representatives constituting the one-third of the House needed to lodge the complaint hail from the political opposition. In particular, they hail from businessman Danding Cojuangco's Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC). And Cojuangco, it would seem, has an ax to grind with the chief justice.

Under Davide's watch, the Supreme Court declared public the funds Cojuangco had used to buy P100 million worth of shares in the San Miguel Corp. In a separate decision, the court voided a lucrative land-development contract that Cojuangco's business partner had been positioned to control. There are, of course, other reasons to explain opposition ire against Davide, although none figure so centrally as his inauguration of the Arroyo presidency.

Evidence of conspiracy aside, what matters in this case, as in the Jose Pidal case, is that a political grudge is being pursued with the veneer of legality - that is, under the pretense of being the legitimate work of a democratic institution. This is law being used as a force of disorder, in order to undermine the rule of law.

President Bush's acclaim of Philippine democracy cannot help but be a sly pat on the United States' back as well. It was the Americans, after all, who, during their administration of the Philippines (1899-1946), established its democratic institutions after the image of their own democracy. On Philippine soil, however, these institutions took on a distinctly Filipino character, one not always consonant with democratic ideals.

Ironically, the introduction of a US Congress-style bicameral legislature led to the consolidation of a national oligarchy. Sociologist Benedict Anderson points out that a Philippine Congress "proved perfectly adaptable to the ambitions and social geography of a mestizo nouveau riche", a class fostered under Spanish colonial rule. Through their interactions in Congress, these caciques, who heretofore controlled only their respective local political fiefdoms, now enjoyed national-level exposure and access. Consciousness of themselves as a ruling class deepened. At the same time, by helping themselves to the opportunities at their fingertips, they defined their relationship to the state. The character of post-independence cacique democracy is revealed by the liberties it allowed itself: the manipulation of exchange rates, the sale of monopolistic licenses, huge defaulted central-bank loans, a sprawl of pork-barrel legislation, and an enormous, ineffectual bureaucracy that doubled as a family employment agency. The effects of cacique parasitism soon became apparent as the Philippine state slid into decrepitude; Anderson notes: "from being the most 'advanced' capitalist society in Southeast Asia in the 1950s, [the Philippines became] the most depressed and indigent in the 1980s".

Only sustained US aid, investment and support held the enfeebled state together. Political scientist Paul Hutchcroft writes that "the Philippine status as an ex-colony and post-colonial client of the United States ensured the survival of the central state ... wrapping it in a cocoon that insulated it both from the need to guard against external threat and (because of a steady flow of external resources) from the need to develop a self-sustaining economy". Hence, the marriage of American electoralism to Spanish caciquism enabled oligarchy-building at the expense of state-building.

Between democracy and disaster The complaint against Davide demonstrates that Philippine democracy still lacks the backbone of a state strong enough to regulate its rambunctiousness. For the past three weeks, the House and the Supreme Court have been at loggerheads over the constitutionality of impeaching Davide. One would think the constitution is self-evident on the matter, and, were it not for lawyers, it is: it explicitly prohibits the initiation of impeachment proceedings against public officials twice within a year. Pro-impeachment lawyers have muddled the waters, however, by questioning the meaning of the words "initiated" and "proceedings".

In no time at all, a political witchhunt has become a turf war, with each side brandishing the constitution. Last week, the Supreme Court issued a status quo order blocking the transmittal of the impeachment complaint to the Senate until its constitutionality had been resolved (by - who else? - the Supreme Court). Congress chafed under the injunction, countering that impeachment proceedings fall under its purview. The court went ahead anyway, and early this week found the impeachment complaint unconstitutional. Thankfully, Congress voted to junk the complaint, although most of its initial supporters from the NPC remained stalwart in their position. They lamented their defeat as a breach of the constitution. Representative Jacinto Paras remarked ominously: "The people will have to resort to other measures to effect a regime change."

Paras may have been more prescient than he intended. All this legal wrangling is missing the point. This is more than a legal question; it is a moral one. The fact that an impeachment complaint without solid legal basis got to the point it did - to the point, very nearly, of real destabilization - suggests that laws can be scuttled or twisted to serve malicious designs. Given the law's promiscuity, then, how authoritative can it really be? True, the House ultimately respected the Supreme Court's decision, and thus, one could say, upheld the rule of law, but had the pro-impeachment forces greater moral support, it is not unimaginable that they would have imposed their will despite the law - and legalized their move after the fact. One need not even imagine it; one need only recall the events that installed Arroyo as president in 2001. This is, no doubt, precisely what has tortured the opposition's imagination.

This sense, that laws lack sufficient moral authority, is nowhere more clearly expressed than in each side's resort to drumming moral support from that fourth and most authoritative branch of Philippine government: the masses. People power has been mobilized both for and against the impeachment. They even have their colors: red for impeachment, black against. The massing of a crowd in black in front of the Supreme Court days after the impeachment complaint was made known proved irresistible even for President Arroyo, who discarded her neutrality to come out in support of Davide - and perhaps to cash in on the cachet of his support.

Furthermore, the excitement over the issue has been so frenzied and unreflective that a largely fabricated grievance has become more real. Court employees have been on the cusp of staging a mass walkout since the controversy began but have wavered because, according to Jojo Guerrero, president of the Alliance of Court Employees Associations of the Philippines, "We are still asking ourselves: Are we just being used or are we really not getting enough of the JDF?"

While shows of people power curry moral weight for one side or the other, they displace it from exactly where it should inhere: the law. Resorting to extra-legal rah-rah squads undermines the authority of democracy's legitimate conflict-resolution mechanism and licenses the politics of perpetual crisis.

The Davide case well illustrates political scientist David Apter's observation that "the moral basis of politics determines the meaning of legitimate authority". It would seem that it takes more than just the right institutions to found a civil democratic polity. A social consensus effectively defining normative behavior is essential as well.

The opportunity to build this consensus is what the American colonial regime denied Filipinos by building their institutions for them and calling it democracy. Democracy cannot be given. Nothing spares a nation the tasks and tumult involved in building its state, which, ultimately, is held together more by the process of state-building than by the institutions that have been built up. This process endows its institutions with authority. This is the very process that the Philippines is now undergoing as it walks the tightrope between democracy and disaster. George W Bush, overweening in his eagerness to plant democracy in Iraq, would do well to consider not just the light but the shadows cast by the first democratic nation in Asia.

Philippines criticizes terrorism warning
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
November 6, 2003

The Philippines government has hit out at Australia and the United States for what it calls unwarranted advisories warning of likely terrorist attacks against their citizens in the Philippines. Foreign Secretary Blas Ople says the US and Australia are at higher risk than the Philippines, and are the ones being targeted by terrorists. He was reacting to claims made recently by Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill that the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network could intensify its attacks in predominantly Christian Manila.

Earlier this week, a spokesman for a US military contingent in joint training with Filipino troops said American soldiers were to be restricted to camp to avoid being "high risk" targets by local terrorists. But Mr. Ople has denounced such warnings saying there are no specific terrorist threats against the Philippines.

US Marines begin joint operations in Philippines amid tight security
November 3, 2003

CLARK, Philippines (AFP) Some 400 US Marines arrived in the Philippines Monday for joint training with Filipino troops amid intense security because of the threat of terrorist attack, the US military said. The US troops would be restricted to camp because of the potential threat from Muslim militants linked to the al-Qaeda network and local communist insurgents, said Colonel Steven Busby, co-director of the two-week maneuvers.

The US Marines were here for training and there would "no liberty" for them during their stay in the country, Busby told reporters after the opening ceremonies at this ex-US airbase north of Manila. The 15-day exercises called Talon Vision involving the Americans and about 900 Filipino soldiers would see both forces training at an army base north of Manila and a Marine base just outside the capital. "As with every military operation, there is an element of danger. However, force protection is our number one priority, so US military members are required to take safety precautions," said US Marine spokesman Captain Burell Parmer.

"However we are confident in the security arrangements being made between the Philippine and US armed forces," he said. The US forces will use 20 military aircraft, mostly modern combat helicopters, in their training with local forces, Busby said. Parmer said the training would not focus on counter-terrorism but stressed that it would boost the capabilities of Filipino forces who are battling communist and Muslim separatist guerrillas. Among the local security concerns are Muslim rebels who are believed to have ties with the al-Qaeda terror network and the Jemaah Islamiyah group. Colonel Flaviano Valduheza of the Philippine air force, the co-director of the exercise, said that US and Filipino troops would be sharing tactics, techniques, and procedures and would jointly operate US and Philippine military aircraft and equipment.

Single, white and looking
Singapore Strait Times
Forget Sarong Party Girls. Single white women are up against a new breed of Asian women dating white guys. Skin color doesn't even enter the picture
By Arti Mulchand
November 4, 2003

GIRL TALK - THEY are spoiling the market. So concludes an American friend about Asian women dating Caucasian men. And this said to me, an Asian who is dating a Caucasian man. It was hard to miss the irony, but then came her quick clarification. 'I mean the Party Girls,' she says. Ah, yes, the infamous Sarong Party Girls - boon to Caucasian men who want to sow their wild oats in Asia, and bane to single, white females who find themselves in the midst of the ang mo's Asian playground.

My friend, let's call her Sandy, is smart, svelte, sexy and intelligent. But, she says, it is impossible to score a decent date in Singapore because her male Caucasian counterparts are busy having their Asian fetishes serviced. 'After all the gushing and fawning by the SPGs, the guys can't deal with anything less,' she laments. 'Their egos are so inflated, they think every girl is dying to rub up against them. And these are guys who probably wouldn't even get a second look back home, sometimes not even a first look.' I was more surprised at her complaints than I was at being made to feel like a market-spoiling SPG, however briefly.

I thought that Asia being a white man's playground was old news. And I thought everyone was done slamming SPGs. She wasn't. 'When I got here a year ago, I was really surprised. I thought Singapore, where the women are better educated, would be more like other places I had been, like Australia, New York or Vancouver,' she continues. 'I didn't think it was like Bangkok or Jakarta.' As a disclaimer, she adds that she is more than open to dating Asian men, though she says they seem to write her off, too. So, SPGs are back on the hate radar - at least for lonely Sandy. In fact, her tirade had not ended. She recounts how an American guy recently told her that he didn't date white women because they require 'too much energy'. He would have to think about what he says and does.

'Right now, he doesn't have to try very hard. He'll have someone else tomorrow. SPGs don't even care what a man looks like, as long as he's white,' she concludes. UNTIL fairly recently, there weren't that many single Caucasian career women in Singapore, or in Asia for that matter. More seem to have come, mainly with hopes of fast-tracking their careers, though it doesn't appear to be doing likewise for their private lives. The topic was dealt with last month in an Asian Wall Street Journal article by Stan Sesser. In it, he quoted executive Julia Sleva, a 30-something Canadian living in Bangkok. Apparently, Ms Sleva's on the career superhighway, but her love life moves slower than peak-hour Bangkok traffic. Most Caucasian men in Bangkok are either married, gay or have a young Thai hanging on their arm, while most Thai men don't date expat women, she complains.

Sesser adds: 'The difficulties of many single white women in Asia are so widespread that counselors are dealing with it every day.' It's apparently no different in Singapore. One British female friend tells me: 'Many Caucasian men arrive as normal human beings and morph into total idiots after sleeping their way around the SPG hangouts. 'They can't go back home and find a woman because it would shatter their illusions of being a sex god.' Another friend, an Australian, adds: 'Everywhere you look, a white guy is holding an Asian girl's hand. What's left for us? 'Worse yet, after they've had them, the guys want everything small and submissive, and no questions asked.' WELL, at least it's a consolation that although I'm going out with a Caucasian, Sandy does not consider me an SPG.

I'm different, she says. 'You speak your mind and you are who you want to be; you don't just stand there and take everything,' she says. Indeed. I like to think I make my man - whatever color of the rainbow he happens to be - put in as much energy into our relationship as he would have to with a Caucasian woman. Perhaps it's because the relationship I'm in has nothing to do with me wanting to find an easy way out of Singapore, or him wanting to find an easy way into me. Neither has it to do with the color of our skins. In fact, I'm surprised that the single, white female doesn't see us - this new breed of Asian women dating white men - as a bigger threat than the fawning, you-are-a-white-god SPG. Because, if we are both avoiding the same sort of men - those who go through SPGs faster than you can say sarong - then aren't we potentially fighting for the same segment of men left?

That is, white men who don't believe in the 'Asian and therefore easy' myth? White men who - gasp! - go out with a woman because of her character, brains and his interest in her culture? Whatever the case, I suggest to Sandy that she just ignore the SPGs and their white men. But she insists that it's not possible, given how SPGs have forced down standards across the board. They give in to their partner's obsessions so easily, the men take women for granted, SPG or otherwise. Still, I see an upside to all this, even for women like Sandy. SPGs are actually doing women - white and otherwise - a favour by attracting the potential trash among Caucasian men. In fact, they are helping to separate the Richards from, well, the Dicks, so to speak. And everyone - Sandy and myself included - stand to benefit.

Gordon assails Payumo for 'smuggling' in Subic
By Joel P. Mapiles
October 31, 2003

TOURISM Sec. Richard Gordon assailed Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) Chairman Felicito Payumo for the alleged rampant smuggling of cars, radio equipment, rice and chicken in Angeles City. Gordon said Subic, under the stewardship of Payumo, has gained nothing but economic setback based on records of the National Economic Development Authority (Neda). Gordon disclosed that Subic now is employing only 15,000 workers as compared to the 16,000 workers of Clark.

The secretary said the situation in Subic would result to its economic downfall due to the poor performance of Payumo. Gordon suggested that Payumo encourage the setting up of new factories in Dinalupihan, Hermosa and Morong that would create more jobs. Gordon claimed that "Payumo is spending money for some members of the press just to cover up the poor image of Subic." The secretary said Payumo is allegedly fooling the governors in Central Luzon as he belied reports that the provincial governors are asking for his ouster as Cabinet Officer for Regional Development (Cord). In fact, Gordon said, he asked Governor Lapid on the veracity of the report.

Gordon added that even Bulacan Gov. Josefina dela Cruz belied the report as de la Cruz even supported his proposal for every municipality to allot 100 hectares as commercial and residential areas along the north diversion road to disperse industries in Central Luzon. On the other hand, Gordon revealed that President Arroyo is planning to put up an expressway from Porac to Subic to speed up the transportation of goods and products.

Special correspondent John Zarocostas interviewed the Rev. Shay Cullen of the Missionary Society of St. Columban last week in Geneva about the plight of street children in the Philippines, where the Irish-born Roman Catholic priest works.

Question: Can you elaborate on the death squads that are killing street children in the Philippines?
Answer: Several years ago, we were contacted by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Davao City. They asked us to help them to look into the problem of mainly street children who were being shot dead by death squads. These are a group of men riding around on black motorcycles, all like a team dressed in a kind of a black uniform. The death squads are armed and obviously connected by radios, as if they're official, and killing children on the streets in pools of blood. So we did an investigation and contacted various NGOs to help, insofar as it was possible, to identify the children who were killed. Because some are homeless, they're vagrants, just grown up in the streets, nobody knows who they are. We found out many of them were 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. Since 2000, it was Mayor Benjamin de Guzman who was in charge [of Davao City], but we got no satisfaction. So I began an Internet lobbying campaign to challenge what he was doing. Speaking at an international conference and calling for the setup of an international court for children's rights. Or a part of the International Criminal Court should have a section for children, specifically. But he got very angry with us, and he sued me. But that's the way to try and stifle us, keep us from speaking out, speaking to the media, telling our story, standing up for human rights. That was in the year 2000, and we fought that case in court, defending our right to protect children. Eventually we won that case, but the killings went on. He lost the next election two months later and his rival, Rodrigo Duterte, came to power — and he's still in power — and the killings got worse, and went on. And this gang still acted with impunity, shooting and killing.

Q: Overall, how many children have been killed in Philippine cities?
A: I can't say overall. They do not report. It's covered up. Even in Davao City and surrounding areas, we are looking at 56 [killings] over the last three years. ... They are reckoned to be minors, but we cannot fully confirm that because they don't have birth certificates. ... A rough estimate is something like that. But in other cities, more have been reported in newspapers.

Q: And in total?
A: We reckon hundreds [of children] are being killed in cities all over the place. Three were beheaded in Quezon City, right in front of the congressional building — well that's last year. I can only say hundreds. But many more are picked up and tortured, and beaten and jailed illegally in terrible, terrible conditions. We're working on rescuing them. But how many are killed may be many more than we are estimating.

Q: In the U.N. Human Rights Committee meeting last week, the issue of the death squads came up. Were you satisfied by the expert commissioners, and what were the responses of Philippine authorities?
A: Well, we briefed the members of the committee, and they responded very positively — with shock. They did not realize the extent of this killing of street children. We went to the hearings, and they really questioned thoroughly the members of the Philippine delegation, who had no answers. They had no way to explain these killings. So we're very happy we were able to take up this issue with the help of the [District-based] World Organization Against Torture and bring it to the attention of the Human Rights Committee.

Q: Do you think Philippine authorities will follow up, now that the issue in the U.N. spotlight?
A: Well, we still have to make this known to them through these reports and through the media. The world is looking at this, and they will sit up and take notice. And we hope President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will withdraw her endorsement of the mayor of Davao City as her crime consultant, because his methods are brutal and he espouses violence.

Q: Your organization has also visited a lot of prisons. What did you see?
A: Well, we have visited 37 prisons. The conditions are subhuman — the children are mixed in with the adults, who are criminals. In many cases, they are raped inside jail. As punishment, the females are handed over to prisoners or to guards and are sexually molested and abused. The males are also sexually abused, because they're mixed in. The crowding is unbelievable. We have just been to Novotas, in Metro Manila, the latest prison visit, and here we have 17 minors mixed in with 33 adults in a room adequate for about 15 people.

Q: How young are these children?
A: In our visits to different jails, we see them as young as 10 years old.

Q: How many prisons that you've visited are not up to minimum standards?
A: We've been to 37 jails, and 80 percent would be considered substandard — absolutely. And not only that, but we see violations of basic human rights under the conditions in which they live. We went to the Olongapo center [on Subic Bay]. It's not even a jail — it's a child and women care center — but they have prison cells there that are bare floors. There's no toilet — a hole in the floor full of excrement — with rats, and insects, mosquitoes, and sleeping on concrete floors, being beaten, having cold water thrown on them. Food is placed on the floor outside the bars, to make them reach out like animals and eat with their hands, on the floor, through the bars in some cases. And this is a project in the city plan that is funded by the World Bank.

Q: In your deliberations here in Geneva with human-rights experts, was there any mention that a U.N. rapporteur on extra judicial killings would look into these problems?
A: No, they have not done that. But we have made submissions to the special expert for arbitrary detentions, and we are planning to present something to the special expert. The problem is, we cannot get enough witnesses. The children will not be able to testify, or to give their statements and stand by them, because they're so scared of being identified and then being assassinated.

Q: What about the special rapporteur on extra judicial killings? Is there a possibility she will look into the issue?
A: Well, we certainly hope they will look into in and do something about it, to rescue some of these children and bring them out of the area so they could testify and go public. Unfortunately, they've not yet been able to do it, because even the NGOs in that area are intimidated and threatened. They're really quite afraid to move in this way, even though in our foundation we have promised them financial support and protection of those children.

Q: Have you received any threats?
A: In my work, I work confronting the sex mafia, the politicians, the military, and they give us their usual threats. I have been arrested, beaten up, put into prison, handcuffed, they even fired at us.

Q: With blanks?
A: No, they fire real bullets. But we don't know in what direction, you know. It's quite scary when they shoot. They did not hit any of us, but it happens.

Q: What makes you keep on going? A: The condition of the children is far worse than what we have to endure. The risks that we take are minimal when you compare them to what the kids are suffering in the prisons, or picked up and taken away and tortured and then just assassinated. We don't need much more motivation than that. And I have a good team at Preda, we have very good workers.

Q: These children are looked down upon by Philippine society?
A: The children on the streets are obviously evidence of social neglect and the failure of the state to look after its children and to protect them. The whole justification of government is to protect the public, and the most vulnerable come first. So there's a failure of government, number one. And two, there's a failure of the local society to live up to basic moral standards, help the poor and so on. Very few charities are dealing with this in a robust way. And third, the children, of course: They live in the streets, and they're an eyesore. They're called "pests," so they have to be swept up and got rid of. And this is how the merchants see it, because the kids may steal food from the market to eat or they're nuisances to be got rid of.

Q: How closely connected is the trafficking of children with the sex industry in the Philippines?
A: Well, that's one of our main areas of work for many, many years — tracking and investigating the trafficking of children and minors in sex bars. We go to the brothels, and we do some undercover investigations to identify the minors. then we take steps to rescue them, bring them out. When they recover and are willing and ready, then they will testify against their traffickers and abusers. Many of those involved are foreigners — of every nationality, so to speak, working together in the sex industry, trading young minors for sex among themselves and providing them for many of the sex tourists who come flying in, invited by the clubs and bars. If [the adult trafficker is] a German, they bring in Germans; if it's a Brit, they bring in the British tourists — pick them up at the airport, drive them to the hotel and provide young girls for them.

DAVAO CITY (Philippines) - Dressed in black, they prowl the streets of this city in the southern Philippines on their motorbikes in search of prey. The vigilante killers are out to get the street children. Armed with butcher's knives or pistols, the Davao death squads mete out their idea of swift justice with impunity and see their killings of homeless kids as ridding the city of petty criminals and drug couriers. At least 53 cases of children being gunned down by the vigilantes have been recorded by the Preda Foundation, an NGO that has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in defending the rights of Filipino women and children. One of the more chilling facts behind the killings is that they have been carried out with the tacit approval of the local authorities and the mute acceptance of the city's residents. But the summary executions have infuriated human-rights groups here, one of which recently presented evidence to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR).

'It is appalling that these killings have been going on since the mid-1990s and yet none of these incidents have been investigated, none of the perpetrators have been punished,' Irish priest and Preda founder Shay Cullen told The Straits Times. He also conceded that it was true many of the street children were indeed petty thieves or suspected couriers for drug syndicates. 'They are considered pests, and the business community feels they should be eliminated,' he said. Since May 2001, 86 people in Davao and the nearby city of Digos, many of them criminals and street children, have been found sprawled dead on the streets, lying in pools of blood. 'It's the crime-reduction policy in these areas,' Father Cullen claimed. 'We've written to almost everybody, including President Arroyo, about this but the authorities do not seem interested in finding the killers and putting a stop to these killings.'

At least four human-rights groups - Preda, Tambayan, the Kabataan Consortium and the Kabiba Alliance for Children's Concerns - have linked the city's tough-talking mayor, Rodrigo Duterte, to the killings. Mr. Duterte, who is also President Arroyo's anti-crime consultant, has denied any hand in the slayings, saying the deaths were the result of wars between rival drug gangs. But it is the mayor himself who has openly espoused the Old Testament-inspired dictum towards criminals: 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' He told The Straits Times: 'I cannot stand crime and criminals, especially drug pushers. My policy is zero tolerance. 'I have only one message to criminals: Don't do it in my city or you will die.' In his weekly TV programme For the People, From the People, Mr. Duterte is wont to name suspected criminals, kidnappers and drug dealers. Many of those named have subsequently been found dead, according to human-rights groups.

Although human-rights activists and some Davao officials have aired their concerns about the killings, residents, especially businessmen, are not complaining. The fact is that Davao, the Philippines' largest city in terms of land area, has the lowest crime rate. However, the UNHCR is not impressed and has asked the Philippine government to explain. 'There's a directive to conduct our own independent investigation. 'We need to collect evidence and validate these allegations,' said Presidential Commission on Human Rights director Edgardo Diansuy.

Confusing Occupation With Liberation
Bush's claim that the U.S. freed Filipinos strains the truth, bodes ill for Iraq and probably sets Mark Twain spinning.
By Amy Kaplan
October 24, 2003

"Why, we have gotten into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation." Someone could have said this about Iraq today or about Vietnam 35 years ago. But in fact it was Mark Twain who said it a century ago about the American occupation of the Philippines. I was reminded of that quote when I heard President Bush, in a speech Saturday before the Philippine Congress, refer to our history in that country as a "model" for establishing democracy in Iraq. Alluding to the 1898 Spanish-American War, he said, "America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule."

Twain would have laughed with outrage at this stretch of the truth, which obscures a shameful chapter of this story. What Bush called liberation, Twain decried as a bloody campaign against the Philippine struggle for independence, a campaign that would usher in five decades of occupation by the United States. In the years leading up to the Philippine war, Twain, the outspoken vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League, believed that once Spanish rule ended, the Philippines would achieve their independence: "It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas." Instead, the U.S. annexed the Philippines in 1899 and waged a brutal war to enforce its rule across the archipelago. Nearly 5,000 American soldiers died, and historians estimate that 250,000 Filipinos perished — 20,000 were killed in combat and the vast majority died from disease and starvation.

The U.S. Army burned villages and fields, massacred civilians and herded the residents of entire provinces into concentration camps. The U.S. justified this inhumane treatment by calling Filipinos uncivilized and incapable of governing themselves. American soldiers in the Philippines, many of whom had fought Indian wars in the U.S. West, were the first to use the racist appellation "gook," which gained notoriety during the Vietnam War. Many distinguished Americans across the political spectrum joined Twain in protest of this war, including Grover Cleveland, Jane Addams, Samuel Gompers, Andrew Carnegie, William James and W.E.B. Du Bois. When the Senate conducted hearings in 1902 on atrocities, American soldiers testified about the killing of prisoners and torturing of civilians.

Although the war officially ended with the declaration of U.S. sovereignty in 1902, there was ongoing resistance to the occupation. In one incident, U.S. troops massacred at least 900 Muslim women, children and men in 1906 on the southern island of Jolo. Today, U.S. military advisors are being sent to that region, where the Bush administration and that of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo see only terrorists but where residents remember tales of the brutal occupation of a century ago. If the story of democracy in the Philippines is a model for Iraq today, how ironic that the president of the United States, more than 100 years after the end of "hostilities," found it too dangerous to stay the night.

Filipino protesters in the streets of Manila last week have a very different interpretation of this history. Bush must be reading revisionist historians who point to the war in the Philippines as a model for waging war in the 21st century. He might be better off reading Twain, whom Laura Bush praised as "one of America's most important storytellers," and one who wrote eloquently about the meaning of freedom. In a famous essay, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness," Twain imagined a benighted citizen of the Philippines trying to understand how liberation could turn into its opposite. The person sitting in darkness muses, "There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive's new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land." Which of these two Americas would Mark Twain see at work today in the occupation of Iraq?

Amy Kaplan, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, is the president of the American Studies Assn. and the author of "The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture"

Philippines not a good model
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
GUEST COLUMN
October 22, 2003

As a professor of history, I was quite appalled to see President Bush's recent reference to the Philippines as a model for the reconstruction of Iraq. On the contrary, the history of American involvement in the Philippines offers timely and important lessons in the hazards and unforeseen consequences of U.S. intervention in the rest of the world. In April 1898, the United States entered into war with Spain following the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor (an explosion, incidentally, that was later determined to be accidental). The sensationalistic activities of the press (what we call "yellow journalism") whipped up public sentiment against Spain. In addition to San Juan Hill and other well-known battles in Cuba, American troops, along with Filipino rebels, fought the Spanish in the Philippines, capturing Manila in August.

In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War the United States had to figure out what to do with the Philippines. President William McKinley decided upon outright annexation of the islands, pledging to "educate the Filipinos, and to uplift and civilize and Christianize them," conveniently ignoring the fact that, after centuries of Spanish rule, the majority of the Filipino population already was Christian. The planned annexation of the Philippines sparked an intense, impassioned debate among the American people. An anti-imperialist movement emerged, including among its members such prominent figures as Andrew Carnegie, Jane Addams and Mark Twain. Opponents of U.S. expansion argued that annexation was profoundly un-American, in violation of the principle of self-government embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and would set an ominous precedent for empire incompatible with democracy.

Furthermore, the Filipino people desired independence. They had originally seen the Americans as liberators from Spanish domination, not as new colonizers. In early 1899, anti-American resentment erupted into insurrection, led by Emilio Aguinaldo. The resulting war in the Philippines was far more nasty and brutish than the so-called "splendid little war" with Spain. American troops committed atrocities, attacked civilians, and destroyed their crops and villages. By the time the war ended in 1902 (although intermittent fighting lasted for decades), more than 4,000 Americans, 20,000 rebels and perhaps 200,000 civilians lay dead. And the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world had permanently changed.

It was only in 1946 that the Philippines were granted independence, though the State Department's own briefing papers, distributed just this week to the Bush entourage, still state that "U.S. administration of the Philippines was always declared to be temporary." In the intervening years, the U.S. government has continued to support a succession of antidemocratic, repressive regimes in the Philippines, notably that of Fernando Marcos. Far from being a model for nation building and democracy, as Bush has explicitly stated, the Philippines epitomizes an American foreign policy based on dubious premises and false promises. We would do well to heed the lessons of the Philippines today.

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — Some 900 US marines are taking part in the "Talon Vision" joint military exercise to be held in three areas from Nov. 1 to 15. Maj. Allan Ballesteros, Talon Vision spokesman, said the joint exercise will be dominated by the air forces of the two countries, although 800 Filipino Army soldiers will be joining it. Ballesteros, of the 600th Air Base Wing here, said the American soldiers will be flying in from the US Marine Air Wing homebase in Okinawa, Japan for the war games here, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija and Ternate, Cavite.

The Special Operations Wing of the Philippine Air Force will also actively participate in the exercise. Ballesteros could not immediately say if the movements of the participating US soldiers would again be restricted for security reasons. In last year’s Talon Vision exercise here, a senior US military official told reporters that such restrictions were based on the classification of the Philippines as a "high-risk area" amid the global terrorism threat. US military officials have been meeting with their Filipino counterparts here since last month to prepare for the Talon Vision. Ballesteros said the US marines are slated to construct more schoolbuildings and basketball courts in communities near the Talon Vision areas. Twenty US marine engineers began building yesterday a three-classroom schoolbuilding in Barangay Maruglo in Capas, Tarlac, as part of the civic component of Talon Vision.

US President George W. Bush on Saturday commended the Philippines for its role in the Asian democratic movement and the worldwide war against terrorism, and declared that the United States cherishes Philippine friendship and that it will keep this strong for years to come. The pro-US sentiments of the audience became apparent even before Bush's speech when they clapped heartily on seeing him on the giant television monitor as he was about to enter the Batasan Complex to address a special joint session of Congress. "President Bush was very pleased by the reception [at the Batasan] and the big applause. This is something we will remember for a long time," Senate President Franklin Drilon said of Bush's reaction to the reception by the legislators.

In a well-applauded speech that struck a discordant note among five party-list representatives who walked out before its start, Bush also paid tribute to the "courageous stand" taken by President Arroyo in supporting the Iraq war and in fighting the Abu Sayyaf. "The world needs the Philippines to continue to shed its light in Asia and beyond," he said. Bush noted that some critics are saying that the culture in the Middle East would not sustain democracy. "The same thing was also said about the culture in Asia, and yet the Philippines became the first democratic country in the whole of Asia," he pointed out.

Bush devoted most of his 21-minute speech to the campaign against terrorism and the Philippine support for this campaign. "The Philippines and the United States have seen the face of terrorism. Now, the enemy wants to spread chaos. Nations have no choice but to defend themselves to save civilization. We will not be intimidated by the terrorists," he said as the audience applauded. He lashed out at the Abu Sayyaf and cited the efforts of President Arroyo to dismantle the bandits and the local affiliates of the regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.

Bush then urged the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to reject terrorism and move toward lasting peace in Mindanao. He was apparently well informed about the Oakwood mutiny on July 27. He stressed that the military should concentrate on protecting the people and not to contend for power. Although the United States would help the Philippines and President Arroyo in the fight against terrorism, the success of the campaign requires more than American assistance, he said.

Bush was supposed to speak at 3:30 p.m., but he did not do so until about 4:45 p.m. The delay prompted some wags at the House to say that Bush had been afflicted with the "Filipino time" syndrome. The long wait, however, did not dampen the warm reception prepared by the legislators for the visiting US President, as they applauded him twice even before he could begin his speech. The only congressmen who did not try to hide their displeasure at Bush's presence were party-list Representatives Crispin Beltran, Lisa Masa, Satur Ocampo, JV Bautista and Mario Agujo, who remained in their seats when Bush approached the podium.

WHITE HOUSE MEMO Fast Lane for President: 6 Nations, 6 Days, Safely
By DAVID E. SANGER
October 14, 2003

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 — When George W. Bush arrives in Manila for a state visit on Saturday, there will be no time to luxuriate in Gen. Douglas MacArthur's old suite at the sumptuous Manila Hotel, the usual overnight spot for presidents. This visit will have no overnight. It lasts exactly eight hours, because the Secret Service will not permit Mr. Bush to stay past dinner in a country whose army officers are sometimes of dubious loyalty and where terrorist groups still strike with audacity. But the Philippine government is not complaining. Indonesia gets the presidential presence for only three hours. It is all part of what one official calls "the trip from Al Qaeda hell." Even for a president who does not like to linger — he once toured the square outside the Kremlin in 20 minutes — this will be an extreme version of Mr. Bush's brand of high-speed tourism.

The visits, before and after a three-night stay in Bangkok for the annual economic summit meeting of Asian leaders, will reward two of Mr. Bush's most important allies at a time when terror groups still have a potent presence in Asia. The enforced haste shows how much Southeast Asia has changed from the region Mr. Bush's predecessors once traveled in so freely. For 15 years, when American presidents visited Asia, it was to celebrate the region's dynamism and to marvel at the semiconductor factories and auto plants that sprang up like bamboo before the Asian economic crisis. But the politics of globalization, too Clinton-sounding to be a favorite subject in the Bush White House even before terrorism took center stage, seems to be the furthest thing from Mr. Bush's mind.

Instead of factories, Mr. Bush is visiting Thai troops who recently returned from Afghanistan. When Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, briefed reporters about the trip on Tuesday, she described no new economic programs with Asian allies and never mentioned the trade deficits with China or a decade of stagnation in Japan. Mr. Bush, she said, was intent on putting "security at the heart" of the Asian talks. "Economics and security are inextricably linked," she argued, citing what happened to tourism on Bali after last year's bombing, in which 200 people were killed. The degree to which the security situation has deteriorated is evident to anyone who glances over the president's public schedule and compares it to how presidents have toured the same places in years past.

In November 1996, President Clinton spent a leisurely few nights in the MacArthur Suite, with its commanding view of Corregidor, the site of the general's last stand in defending the Philippines. And in 1986, when Indonesia was under the iron rule of Suharto, President Reagan soaked in the sun on Bali, the resort island where Mr. Bush's three-hour meeting with President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Islamic leaders will take place. The White House will not say for certain where exactly the meeting is taking place — at a resort, a government guest house or near the airport. One senior official said the dispute with the Secret Service over going to Indonesia at all got so heated "that the whole thing had to end up in the Oval Office, with the president declaring that we are going."

All this has put Indonesia and the Philippines in the same heightened security category as Colombia, where the threat of attack by the drug lords forced the first President Bush to visit for only a day in 1990. Thus Mr. Bush, not an ever-curious tourist, will see less than usual. After a day and a half in California to raise campaign cash and embrace Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr. Bush will hit six countries in six days. He arrives in Tokyo for what Ms. Rice today called "a layover" rather than a visit, though he is expected to eat at a restaurant with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. No doubt his host already knows what Mr. Bush told visitors today: He does not eat sushi. There are hints that Japan may contribute several billion dollars to rebuilding Iraq, but Ms. Rice said on Tuesday that the president is not going with his hand out. He would not have it out for long; he goes next to the Philippines to address a joint meeting of Congress there, the first president to do so since Dwight D. Eisenhower visited four decades ago. Then it is on to a state dinner at Malacanang Palace with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who could receive a boost from a Bush visit.

He will be gone by sundown, off to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit talks and another state visit. He will sleep in Bangkok three nights, but that, too, worries security officials. Two months ago, when Thai and American officials arrested Riduan Isamuddin, an Indonesian terror leader known as Hambali, he apparently disclosed plans to blow up two American-owned hotels in Bangkok during the meeting. The threat has been taken seriously, as have reports that shoulder-fired missiles may have been smuggled into Thailand. Hambali was the main link between Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant Islamic organization that wants to turn Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, into an Islamic state. The number of his followers who remain at large is still a mystery. But they are the primary reason that Indonesia was initially scratched from the president's schedule, before some aides who consider bolstering President Megawati a top priority made their case.

"We need to show her support," one of the aides said. "We're just going to show her that support very quickly." When Mr. Bush leaves Thailand, he will spend the night in Singapore, dining with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and using it as a staging area for visiting Bali. Then it is on to Australia, which provided special forces for the early days of the Iraq war, and where Prime Minister John Howard has made the alliance with Washington a key element of his tenure. Past presidents have taken in the restaurants of Sydney or the wonders of the country. Not Mr. Bush: He cut the trip down to a visit to Canberra, a capital that is a bit like Ottawa but not quite as vibrant. He will be there for just 21 hours, on his way to a day of fundraising in Honolulu, perhaps the only time he will make it to Hawaii between now and the election.

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AFP) — The Philippines will press US President George W. Bush for 30 military helicopters and 30,000 M-16 rifles to help fight insurgencies and suspected terror groups during his upcoming visit to Manila. Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople said here that "there will be substantive talks on the defense needs of the Philippines and how the United States can help to meet them" during Bush’s eight-hour Manila visit on Oct. 18. "This (defense needs) is on top of all existing military assistance under existing treaties," said Ople, who flew here from New York to attend a meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ahead of a regional summit on Indonesia’s Bali resort island.

Bush will make the Philippine stopover en route to a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Bangkok, Thailand. Ople said Bush had promised a military aid package to the Philippines during President Arroyo’s trip to the White House last May. "We are pressing the Americans to deliver on their promise" to give the Philippine Armed Forces 30 utility helicopters to improve their mobility during operations as well as 30,000 M-16s," he said. The Philippines, which has an ill-equipped military, is a staunch supporter of the US-led global war on terrorism and Bush has elevated the Southeast Asian country to major non-NATO ally. This means greater military assistance to Manila, including exercises and military hardware.

Washington has already made good a pledge in 2001 by giving an unknown number of M-16 rifles and eight utility helicopters over the last two years to boost Manila’s capability to fight the Muslim Abu Sayyaf kidnapping group and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the southern Philippines. Air Force officials had said the refurbished helicopters had been modernized for night flying. The Air Force currently has 38 Huey helicopters which are used extensively in operations against the MILF rebels and the New People’s Army communist guerrillas, as well as to destroy Abu Sayyaf hideouts. Washington branded the Abu Sayyaf and the NPA, the military wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, as "foreign terrorist organizations" after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US. The United States has also sent American soldiers in batches to the southern Philippines to train local forces in counter-terrorism techniques.

"On the American side, I think they will (push for a continuation of) joint training under the Visiting Joint Forces Agreement as part of their fight against terrorists in the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia," Ople told reporters. He said Bush would also be reminded of Washington’s assurance of "financial and development support" totaling $30 million in the southern Philippines if there is a breakthrough in peace talks scheduled this month in Kuala Lumpur with the MILF. US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone warned last week that such support could not be given unless the MILF is seen to have cut ties with Jemaah Islamiyah. The al-Qaeda-linked terror group is blamed for last year’s Bali bombing that killed 202 people and for many other attacks. The MILF said accusations of terrorist links were concocted by Manila to get Washington to put pressure on the rebels. Mrs. Arroyo has warned the MILF to purge its ranks of "terrorist cells" if talks had to resume.

Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit landed ashore in the Northern Philippines recently as part of an amphibious-readiness exercise with their Philippine counterparts. Three infantry companies from Okinawa’s 31st MEU, Battalion Landing Team, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment kicked off the exercise Sept. 15 at the Philippine Marine Corps Base in Ternate. The one-week training stint built ties and increased the countries’ ability to work together, according to a Marine Corps news release.

The U.S. Marines hit the beach via landing craft and helicopters from the USS Essex, USS Fort McHenry and USS Harper’s Ferry, which arrived in Subic Bay the day before the exercise began. “An exercise like this greatly improves our ability to stand next to the Philippine marine corps and feel confident in each other’s capabilities,” said Capt. Jackie Schiller, the MEU combat element’s assistant operations officer. U.S. forces also trained with the Philippine navy and army.

“Our ability to project forces rapidly, in particular the quick reaction force, is something the AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] was interested in, and this training helped establish a foundation to continue small-unit operations,” said Lt. Col. Ronald A. Gridley, the 31st MEU operations officer. “Because they have more real-world experience than we can even imagine, we learned a lot from them.” The training was in two locations in the Luzon region: the Ternate installation and the Philippine Army Base at Magsaysay. Throughout the exercise, the forces conducted live-fire and maneuver exercises, demolition training, close-quarters combat, martial-arts training and mechanized training with their amphibious-assault vehicles.

One of the most important aspects of the training involved refueling and resupplying forward-deployed ground and aviation forces — which strike from the sea and have the potential to conduct long-range missions, Marine officials said. “The whole point is to make sure troops and aircrew make it all the way to the battlefield,” said Staff Sgt. Patrick J. Najmulski, aviation-ordnance chief with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 265. “When I was in Iraq for my last assignment, like a lot of others here, we had to conduct FARPs [Forward Ammunition and Refueling Points] all the way to Baghdad … sometimes 400 miles out. I think during this last exercise, we proved that we can do it without a hitch.” The forces also teamed up with local carpenters and engineers on Luzon for community-relations projects.

MANILA - A popular anecdote about Cardinal Jaime Sin goes like this: One day, the prelate sat sandwiched between former leader Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda in a limousine. The road was bumpy and the driver was speeding; the cardinal began to pray. Surprised, Mrs Marcos asked: 'Your Eminence, why are you praying?' 'I am asking God not to let me die like Jesus between two thieves,' Cardinal Sin was said to have replied.

True or not, the anecdote bears out the outspoken nature of the Manila archbishop, who is known as much for leading the dominant Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines in the past 30 years as for his political forays. Weakened by diabetes and a kidney ailment, he turned in a compulsory resignation letter after reaching the retirement age of 75 on Aug 31. It was accepted by Pope John Paul II last Monday. The departing church leader said last week: 'I beg pardon from those I might have led astray or hurt. Please remember me kindly.'

The cardinal - best known for playing a key role in peaceful revolts to depose two Philippine presidents - is one of Asia's most prominent religious leaders and guardians of democracy. A harsh critic of Marcos' martial law regime, it was Cardinal Sin who rallied hundreds of thousands of people to support soldiers who had broken away from the strongman in February 1986. The 'people power' revolt forced Marcos into exile in Hawaii. The cardinal's political activism has often put him at odds with the country's leaders. He has challenged a variety of policies, such as a major effort in 1994 by then president Fidel Ramos, a Protestant, to curb population growth through the use of contraceptives.

In the late 1980s, the cardinal gained a reputation of being 'kingmaker' after a number of politicians made well-publicised visits to his official residence to seek his 'anointment'. Months before the May 1998 elections, he issued veiled admonitions to Filipinos - 83 per cent of whom are Catholic - not to vote for former actor Joseph Estrada, a self-confessed philanderer whom he regarded as morally unfit to lead the country. As the country descended into economic and political turmoil in late 2000, the prelate helped lead huge street protests that led to the ouster of Estrada over alleged corruption and misrule. Estrada's wife called the cardinal 'un-Christian' for supporting the uprising, and the poor, who comprise the bulk of the disgraced leader's supporters, denounced him. Cardinal Sin then issued an unprecedented apology to the poor, assuring them that the church was not 'anti- Estrada, but pro-morality'.

Although he was often criticised for crossing the line separating church and state, Cardinal Sin persisted in the belief that the church needed to maintain a 'critical collaboration' with the state. 'Politics is a human activity and as a human activity, it has its moral dimension. You cannot departmentalise the church in the sacristy. You have to speak out, we cannot leave politics alone to the politicians,' he said in a 1995 interview with a newspaper. Hours before hundreds of soldiers mounted a coup attempt on July 27, Cardinal Sin called on Filipinos to protect President Gloria Arroyo and the country's democratic institutions. The 20-hour revolt failed.

Born on Aug 31, 1928, Cardinal Sin is the 14th of 16 children of a religious family in central Philippines. Ordained a priest at 26, the prelate, known fondly as 'Father Amie', became cardinal in 1976. The bespectacled and rotund priest is known to be fond of king-sized crabs, shrimp, steak and roast pig. Despite his reputation of being a kingmaker, he professes humility. 'I am just like the donkey the Lord rode on,' he told a local daily. 'I cannot boast of anything. Everything is grace.'

Bush visit to boost tourism in RP
By Mayen Jaymalin
The Philippine Star
September 20, 2003

After Filipino-American Hollywood stars, the leader of the world's most powerful nation will become the Philippines' tourism endorser. Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon said yesterday the arrival of US President George W. Bush next month can be considered a virtual endorsement of Philippine tourism. "The visit of President Bush is a strong indication that our country is (a) destination," Gordon said. He said the visit of the US President would give a much needed boost to the country's sagging tourism industry and belie all adverse travel advisories issued by various countries, the US included.

According to Gordon, Bush would bring along a group of foreigners who would be sending out messages worldwide of their impression of Filipino hospitality. Gordon called for a warm reception for the American leader on his arrival on Oct. 18 instead of mounting protest rallies. "Let's open our eyes. What would happen to us if Bush would not visit the Philippines and other countries in Asia," he said. Gordon stressed the scheduled visit of the US president would even bring more benefits for the country.

They called him "Daddy" but Terrence George Matthews was, according to Philippines prosecutors, anything but a father figure to the girls who worked in the Fantastic bar. Bernadette was 13 when she went to work late last year at the nightclub owned and operated by the Sydney retiree and his Filipino wife in Angeles City, 100 kilometres north of Manila. Once home to the big United States Clark Field air base, the squalid frontier town now survives as one of the seedier outposts of Asian sex tourism - a trade dominated by Australian bar operators and sustained by Australian tourists seeking cheap sex, often with children.

Like thousands of other young Filipinas, Bernadette was lured into the bars by poverty. She had left school before finishing first grade and tried a series of short-term menial jobs before been drawn by the false promise of glamour and money. Last November, undercover officers of the Philippines National Bureau of Investigations and staff of an American-funded child protection agency wearing hidden video cameras visited Fantastic where, they allege, Matthews and staff members offered them Bernadette for sex. But this was not the usual deal offered by scores of bars to hundreds of mostly foreign men every night in Angeles - a "bar fine" of 1000 pesos ($A27.60) for takeaway sex. "The video shows them asking 40,000 pesos for a 'cherry girl' - a virgin," says a legal source involved in the case.

According to her statement to police, Bernadette was "bar fined" by five men in the two months she worked at Fantastic. She described them all as "kano" - a Filipino term for white men that can mean Australians, Americans or Europeans. Welfare workers said that during a recent court hearing, the girl wept as she recalled how the last customer who had taken her from the bar before the night of her rescue brutally raped her. Matthews, 56, his wife Editha and bar "mamasan" Rea Dela Cruz are now facing the Angeles Regional Trial Court on charges of procuring minors for prostitution, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Following the raid on Fantastic and the nearby G-Spot bar, during which six under-aged girls were rescued and taken to shelters by social workers, police ordered the two bars to shut down. Matthews and his co-accused were released on bail of 200,000 pesos. But the threat of a long jail sentence has not dampened the entrepreneurial spirit of the Matthews family. Within weeks of its closure, Fantastic was back in business with a new fluoro paint job and a new name - the Owl's Nest.

Last week, on the eve of his latest court appearance, "Daddy Terry" was there in a floral shirt and gold chain, playing host to a throng of ageing expatriate regulars - many of them Australians who cradled beers and girls young enough to be their granddaughters into the early hours. A row of teenagers in lime string bikinis swung provocatively on poles on the bar-top dance floor to the thump of dated disco tracks. "New name. New girls. Same owners," giggled one waitress.

The case against Matthews and his co-accused has highlighted a sex trade that flourishes in Angeles and other Philippines cities more than a decade after the American forces that spawned it were given their marching orders. It is a trade that continues to shame Australia which, despite tough legislation enacted by the Federal Government nine years ago to combat child sex tourism, remains a primary source of both customers and bar owners. Father Shay Cullen, a Catholic priest who has lived in the area for 32 years, runs the Preda Foundation, a child protection agency that is now sheltering Bernadette and many other abused children. "We reckon between 50 and 60 per cent of the bars in Angeles are Australian owned. They are registered in the names of their Filipino partners, but when you look behind the screen you'll find it's often Australians in charge," Father Cullen says.

"These bars are also a magnet for Australian tourists. We've always seen in Angeles that a large proportion of the customers are Australians." While much of the trade is legal, Angeles City is acknowledged by welfare workers and child protection agencies as a favourite regional destination for child abusers. "It's common knowledge that this is the place to come for sex with children. Much of it is well hidden, but it's easy for people looking for children to find them," says a Filipino lawyer. Last month a British university lecturer was arrested for producing pornography with young children. A British and an American bar owner are awaiting trial on charges of procuring children for prostitution. Attempts to prosecute offenders are often hamstrung by the lack of evidence, by the girls' fear of their employers and by families that rely on their children's income to survive.

Many arrested offenders buy their way out of jail and out of the country. Bernadette McMenamin, head of the Australian branch of the international child protection agency Ecpat, which campaigned for the 1994 legislation under which 16 Australians have been prosecuted for raping children overseas, says Australians are responsible for much of the nation's child sex industry. "We cannot slip into complacency. The Philippines has always been a hunting ground for Australian child sex tourists and . . . clearly there are a lot of Australians still actively involved," she says. "We are in the thick of it and the Australian Government should be doing more to try to stop it."

During cross-examination in a closed-chambers hearing last Wednesday, lawyers representing Terrence Matthews argued that the young Bernadette and the other under-aged girls had worked in other bars before being hired by Fantastic. They claimed the 13-year-old's mother approved of her working there. The arguments were attacked by the girls' lawyers. "The fact is that if it were not for these bars, these girls would still be in school," a social worker said later.

MANILA (AFP) - Nearly one in four Filipinos would leave the Philippines for good given the chance, an independent pollster wrote Tuesday. Pulse Asia Inc. chief Felipe Miranda said the figures were probably a "world record", and suggested that more and more Filipinos are increasingly losing hope of achieving a better life in their country -- where four in 10 live on less than a dollar a day. He said the Manila-based polling outfit found in an August national survey that "if migration were possible," 22 percent would leave their Southeast Asian country now. Twenty-one percent are undecided while 57 percent reject the migration option, he wrote in the Philippine Star newspaper.

"What kind of political and religious leaders have Filipinos had across 400 years such that in August of 2003 enough of them -- as many as 20 million souls -- could wish they might leave this country for good and found a new community, perhaps even a new nation elsewhere?" Miranda said the poll found that the "better and more productive segments of the nation's population" -- including 40 percent of those living in the capital Manila, 38 percent of the A, B and C upper and middle-economic classes, 37 percent of college-educated citizens, and 34 percent among the 18-24 age bracket, wanted to pull up stakes. Miranda did not disclose his sampling figures. About seven million of the 80 million Filipinos already live abroad, most of them as temporary workers.

'GI Babies' in the Philippines Seek U.S. Citizenship
Philippine News, News Report
Rita Villadiego
September 15, 2003

PHILADELPHIA — Hoping to highlight the lonely fate of Amerasians, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will ask U.S. President George Bush to help the “GI babies” during Bush's visit to Manila next month. Also known as “Children of the Dust,” Amerasians were born out of relationships between American military servicemen or personnel and Filipino women from 1941 to August 1993. When the U.S. bases closed down, they left between 20,000 to 50,000 fatherless children mostly living in poverty and deprivation in the Philippines.

In a letter to President Arroyo, the Endowment for Strategic Leadership for Asian Americans (ESLAAI) urged her to include the Amerasians as one of her talking points with President Bush. The Philippine president responded to Philippine Congressman James Gordon, one of the authors of the bills, that the plight of the Amerasians be discussed with President Bush. Ernesto Gange, chair of ESLAAI said Amerasians had long been deprived of their natural rights. They face the reality of discrimination and life of destituteness in the Philippines. Some of these children have been seeking legal claim to allow them to immigrate to the U.S. or even just to visit their fathers and relatives but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

U.S. congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald authored a bill in Congress to empower Amerasians in the Philippines and Japan to immigrate to the U.S. Under U.S. Public Law 97-359, known as the Amerasian Immigration Act of 1982, Amerasians born in Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand have been allowed to immigrate to the U.S. and become citizens. But Filipino and Japanese Amerasians are not included in the law and have been stripped of their right to become U.S. citizens. “The U.S. is most generous in providing a home for people who were persecuted and discriminated from their native country, yet they refused to acknowledge the Filipino and Japanese Amerasians who were fathered by American servicemen,” Gange said. “These children are American Asians, they are half our children.” He urged Filipino Americans to write to their congressmen to back the bill.

ESLAAI is currently mobilizing Amerasians to greet President Bush when he visits the Central Philippines next month. Rep. McDonald said that when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines near the former U.S. bases, these children were the victims. They had been abandoned and helpless. Brad Baldia, managing director of ESLAAI said their group was working with other Asian groups like Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese to lobby for the passage of the bill. “We strongly support President Bush’s battle cry of ‘No Child shall be left behind,’ when he visits Asia next month.

He can tell the Filipino and Japanese Amerasian children, “that they will not be left behind,” Gange said. The Pearl S. Buck Foundation has extended help to Amerasians by providing livelihood skills training, health benefits and education program. In a resolution filed by Gordon, he urged the U.S. government to include Filipino Amerasians in the U.S. Public Law so that they can avail of benefits. “A great number of Filipino Amerasias are living in poverty, in need of support, and would want to find their roots and be reunited with their fathers,” said Gordon.

MANILA (AFP) - Cardinal Jaime Sin, the hugely influential spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Philippines, has retired after reaching the age of 75, the Vatican's representative office in Manila said Monday. Pope John Paul II has nominated Gaudencio Rosales, the archbishop of nearby Lipa city, "as successor to the See of Manila," said Father James Reuter, spokesman for the apostolic nunciature here.

The unfortunately named Cardinal Sin wielded his enormous influence in this Southeast nation of 80 million people, Asia's biggest Catholic outpost, to usher out corruption-tainted Filipino presidents over the past 18 years. After using his office as shepherd of Manila's faithful to criticize the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, the cardinal called hundreds of thousands of civilians into the streets in February 1986, helping convince Marcos to resign and flee into US exile.

In January 2001, the cardinal was also a rallying figure for a military-backed popular revolt that ousted Joseph Estrada after Congress impeached the democratically elected leader for alleged corruption. A chubby, wisecracking servant of the Church in his prime, the cardinal has been ill for the past few years, limiting his public appearances to celebrate important masses and issue regular pastoral letters that are often critiques of government policy. "His Holiness Pope John Paul II has accepted the resignation of His Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin from the pastoral governance of the Archdiocese of Manila," Reuter said. "In giving this announcement, the Holy Father expressed his deep gratitude to Cardinal Sin for his unconditional dedication" to his flock, as well as to his "untiring actions in defense of the common good."

SUBIC BAY, Zambales — Some 1,500 United States marines arrived yesterday in this former American naval base for week-long training exercises with their local counterparts. The US troops are part of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Okinawa, Japan and would be engaged in bilateral exercises aimed at enhancing the "inter-operability" of both forces, the Filipino military said. The exercises take place a month before US President George W. Bush visits Manila to discuss anti-terrorism cooperation with President Arroyo.

The Americans arrived on board three surface battleships at the Alava pier here for their amphibious exercises and civic works projects dubbed Amphibious Ready Group Exercises (AGREX 03). The Sept. 14-21 joint training is a follow-up to a regular training maneuver earlier this year, marine 2nd Lt. Tryiokasus Brown said Saturday. "We are always trying to improve our inter-operability with our allies here in the Philippines, and because of the success of the exercise earlier this year we are doing another," he said. The exercises would include live-fire training, air support operations and ship-to-shore landings as well as civic actions including medical, dental and engineering activities in surrounding communities.

Subic Bay Metroplitan Authority (SBMA) chairman Felicito Payumo welcomed the American troops led by US navy Commodore Richard Landolt, US marine Col. Roy Arnold, and US navy attaché to the Philippines Capt. Timothy Keating. Payumo expressed hope that the visit would be safe, fruitful and educational. "We are hoping that they will enjoy their visit and we expect that they will appreciate the warm welcome and the signs of progress that have been happening in the freeport since it was turned over to the Philippine government," Payumo told The STAR. The US Naval battleships docked at Alava Pier in Subic Freeport are helicopter carrier USS Essex (1LHD-2), USS Harpes Ferry (LSD-49) and USS Fort McHenry.

PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Friday signed the Citizenship Retention and Reacquisition Act of 2003, a vital piece of legislation that would allow overseas Filipinos to retain their citizenship, own property as well as enjoy the other rights of a Filipino citizen in the Philippines.

The new law allowing Filipinos abroad to retain their Filipino citizenship "will foster unity among Filipinos," the President said.

Also known as the dual citizenship law, this piece of legislation is a "twin" to the Overseas Absentee Voting Act passed earlier this year, which grants overseas Filipinos the right to vote even from their adopted homeland.

"The passage of the bill is also a response to globalization as much as it is a response to the strong homing instinct of every Filipino after a long sojourn in a foreign land," she said.

The President also signed Friday the Act Rationalizing the Excise Tax on Automobiles, a law which she described as a symbol of a "political will" to make the tax system work.

She said the signing of the two "vital pieces of legislation" also symbolized the return of normalcy in governance, ending almost a month of tension resulting from the failed July 27 coup attempt and the continued rumors of destabilization plots from opposition groups.

SM to build P500-million mall near the Balibago gate of the Clark Special Economic Zone
CLARK FIELD
August 17, 2003

Not content with its sprawling mall drawing the crowds at the San Fernando exit of the North Luzon Expressway, SM will build soon a P500-million mall near the Balibago gate of the Clark Special Economic Zone in Angeles. Groundbreaking at the 16.5-hectare site has been set this October, according to Dr. Emmanuel Angeles, president of the Clark Development Corp. He said that SM has an option to use another 5.5 hectares for expansion.

Angeles said the SM at Clark will sell only tax-paid, not duty-free, goods. It is projected to employ from 2,000 to 10,000 workers, drawn mostly from the local communities. In relation to the project, SM has a commitment to upgrade the 12-hectare Bayanihan Park between the Balibago gate and the MacArthur highway. For that project, Henry Sy Jr. of Prime Central Inc. has promised P50 million as initial outlay. The upgraded park, which is now mostly a dry, dusty grass patch, will feature a terminal for passenger vehicles and amenities forstrollers.

AIRPORT GETTING BUSY: With the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport being upgraded, the United Parcel Service (UPS) is all set to increase its cargo service here from six to 14 flights daily. Federal Express is also reportedly negotiating with CDC the possibility of its basing its regional operations in Clark. It is now operating from the Subic Bay freeport zone.

Joining the rush, Asiana Airlines of Korea is preparing to start in September its thrice-weekly flight from the Clark airport. Other airlines are reportedly studying similar moves. To boost commercial air traffic here, some groups are pressing plans to consolidate in Clark the departure of overseas workers from Central Luzon so the workers do not have to go all the way to Manila to catch their flights. Angeles said the decision of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to accelerate the upgrading of the Clark airport and the ecozone in general has been an impetus for these encouraging developments.

UNFOUNDED FEARS: When we were still debating more than a decade ago whether or not to allow the US lease on military bases to expire as scheduled in 1991, pro-bases elements hanged over our heads the bugaboo of economic dislocation. The defenders of American military presence bombarded us with warnings that US pullout would throw out thousands of Filipino base workers who would find difficulty finding alternative jobs. We had friends and relations among them.

In addition, we were warned, base contracting and entertainment businesses ministering to the US servicemen would collapse and trigger an economic dislocation of awesome proportions. Being from the community just outside Clark, we were among those who trembled at the thought of losing this dynamo pumping multimillions into the economy.

PINATUBO BUTTS IN: As we wavered, Mother Nature intervened. Mt. Pinatubo, sleeping for the past 600 years a mile away in the Zambales ranges to the west, erupted in June 1991. The fury of Pinatubo sent the last American holdouts scampering for safer grounds and sealed the de facto closure of Clark as the largest American military installation outside continental America. It was a forced move. The US gave up what used to be the home of the US 13th Air Force, a strategic platform from which American military might was projected into the region. In addition, the US also had to yield two precious jewels: Its naval base tucked in the mountains of Bataan facing Subic Bay, and its R&R retreat among the pine stands of John Hay in Baguio.

MORE JOBS NOW: To our relief, the economic dislocation that almost everybody predicted did not come about. On the contrary, while Clark under the Americans used to directly employ some 12,000 Filipinos and about 3,000 secondary workers (of US households and contractors), employment in the reinvented Clark Special Economic Zone has surpassed expectations. Angeles said that Clark "has become not only one of the most sought after investment areas in the country, but also a livelihood and environment-friendly haven for the surrounding localities known as the Metro Clark area."

He cited CDC records showing that 26,172 workers have found jobs in the ecozone as of last June 30. Of the number, 24,680 work with the 352 locator-firms. Angeles said investor-firms here include 119 in industrial projects, 64 in commercial, 62 in service-oriented activities, 15 in info-tech, 28 in aviation-related business, nine in tourism-related and agro-industrial projects, 32 in housing, and 14 in utilities. Industrial firms topped the employment list with 62.4 percent or 16,320 workers; followed by the IT and telecommunications companies with 13.2 percent or 3,447 workers. Tourism projects employ 2,231 workers, or 8.5 percent of the workforce.

PAMPANGA WINDFALL: Other employment areas are: Sewing-related projects, 38 percent of the total workforce; electronics, 12 percent; furniture- making, four percent; and other industrial projects, eight percent. The CDC itself has 1,003 employees, while indirectly employing 170 workers with security agencies, 175 street sweepers and 144 grass cutters. Pampanga as host province has garnered the most number of jobs. Angeles City has the biggest share with 7,056 workers, or 26.96 percent. Mabalacat, the town that contributed the biggest land area to the base, has 5,313 workers, or 20.30 percent. Nearby Porac town has 1,007 workers, or four percent. The rest of Pampanga accounts for 7,588 workers.

The share of Tarlac province is 10.1 percent, or 2,621 workers, while Bulacan, Metro Manila and other provinces have 9.91 percent, or 2,594 workers. Angeles said that in its 10 years of managing the transformation of the base into an ideal ecozone, CDC has provided employment to a total of 91,993 workers. He added that approved investment projects are expected to provide jobs to 75,362 in five years based on their employment commitment. Incidentally, Clark will mark its 100th anniversary next month. Starting as Fort Stotsenberg in 1903 mainly as an outpost for the 5th Cavalry, the installation, it has grown to become Clark air base.

PRO-ENVIRONMENT: Looking forward to making the zone not only worker-friendly but also environmentally safe, the CDC has completed the Clark Integrated Solid Waste Management Facility to make sure the wastes churned out by industry are properly disposed. Angeles said the first phase of the Clark Sanitary Landfill, costing P200 million and developed by a German firm, provides disposal systems for wastes generated by locators. It is the first and only real sanitary landfill in the country to date. To improve the landscaping and the viability of the ecosystem here, CDC has embarked on a re-greening program. More than 17,000 trees have been planted since January, surpassing the annual target of 10,000 new trees. In addition to the acacias spread in picnic areas and along the roads, hardwood mahogany trees have been planted along with fruit-bearing and flowering varieties. These will grow alongside the older varieties, around 110,000 of them.

US exploring possibility of re-establishing bases in RP
Posted: 4:52 PM (Manila Time) | Aug. 14, 2003
By Veronica Uy
INQ7.net

AMERICAN military officials on Thursday explored the possibility of re-establishing bases in the Philippines, 12 years after a treaty to extend the stay of US military bases was rejected by the Senate, Philippine officials said Thursday.

Pentagon officials asked the Presidential Commission on the Visiting Forces Agreement about this possibility during a closed-door briefing at the Department of Foreign Affairs on Thursday. The American military officials are in the Philippines as part of the Capstone program of the US National Defense University. The contingent was led by retired US Army General Robert Sennewald.

"They wanted to gauge Philippine attitudes and positions of defense and foreign policy-related issues since the previous American bases left in 1992 after the treaty was rejected in 1991," said Hermes Dorado, deputy executive director of the commission, shortly after the briefing.

The framework of the discussions centered around the ongoing US re-basing program, given the growing opposition to US military bases in Okinawa, Japan, and in South Korea, Dorado said. "They said the Philippines might miss important opportunities in the relocation of US military facilities in East Asia. They wanted to know if the Philippines is taking advantage of some of these relocations," Dorado said.

Foreign affairs undersecretary Amado Valdez, executive director of the commission, said Filipinos have reservations toward the idea of re-basing and instead proposed the establishment of an international facility in Clark and Subic that may be used by other countries such as Singapore and Australia. This way, it would not be interpreted as the return of the American bases, but as a security measure for the Philippines and the Asian region as well.

Quoting the Pentagon officials, Dorado said the re-basing program was not part of security arrangements after the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York but part of a long-term, strategic plan. "Generations are changing and generational change leads to policy changes," Dorado said. "I told them that we have a love-hate relationship. We support the US and all its activities worldwide, but when it comes to returning the bases here, it will be difficult. The answer to that question is difficult to predict, considering that there is a need for recognition of sovereignty."

"Our relationship is vulnerable in terms of the fact that there is emotional baggage on the part of the Filipino," Valdez told reporters. "The reason is the trauma of history, the deceit, the cruelty during the time. That is the baggage that we have to push out of the consciousness of the people." Valdez said the American military officers cannot understand the Philippines' refusal to accommodate the bases once again when there are economic benefits to their military presence here.

The Philippine-US relationship is still vulnerable, he said, because Filipinos still question American support "even if genuine" and guard against it being a "Trojan horse." Apart from the American legacy of education and democratic institutions, he said that later bilateral relations were also characterized by "shortcomings in the economic front," when the US imposed tariff restrictions and thus prevented the country from industrializing.

"All Filipinos believe that we are politically free but not economically," he said. "There must be a serious effort to bring this relationship to a level of partnership that is based on friendship, equality, respect and recognition of Philippine sovereignty. Economic strength is a component of his relationship. The Philippines must be made a safe haven for investments by supporting our Armed Forces of the Philippines."

Sin, Church to blame for RP ills, says author
Posted: 2:49 AM (Manila Time)
Aug. 11, 2003
By Michelle V. Remo
Inquirer News Service

THE MAN thought "crazy" for daring to question the citizenship of Jaime Cardinal Sin in December 2000 is at again. After the Bureau of Immigration snubbed his deportation case against Sin, Ramon Roces Arevalo wrote a book that he launched last Friday, in which he attributes the country's poverty and social ills to the Catholic Church.

Arevalo, a former newspaper columnist who now works as a media specialist and crisis manager, said the cardinal and the Church had been "manipulating the country for a long time." In "The Cardinal Sins of the Catholic Church," Arevalo accuses Sin of making millions from political endorsements. The book claims that Sin's "benediction" of election candidates was based on "considerations of personal gain" and "expanded his wealth beyond man's wildest dreams."

Aside from the deportation case against the cardinal, Arevalo filed cases of dollar-salting, economic sabotage, plunder, land grabbing and estafa against the Catholic Church in 2002. But the suits went the way of the deportation case -- the Department of Justice did not bother to look at them.

Now in the book, Arevalo enumerates the haciendas that the Church allegedly "grabbed" when the country was still a Spanish colony. He denounces the Church's exclusion from tax payments, even while it engages in various "businesses" such as schools and banks, and invests in blue chip stocks.

The book also says the Cardinal accepted "donations" from former prostitution houses, beer gardens and gambling dens and that he planned to topple former President Fidel Ramos who is not a Catholic. "Everybody laughed at me for seeking his deportation," Arevalo said during the book launch. "People didn't get the point." He said the cardinal lost his Filipino citizenship when he ran for the papacy, since this entailed the assumption of Vatican citizenship.

He said he would file another plunder case against the Catholic Church this week, and one for political interference against Sin. Also, he said, he will file treason and conspiracy charges against Immigration Commissioner Andrea Domingo for not allowing his case against Sin to prosper. The Catholic Church would not comment on the allegations. Peachy Yamsuan, information officer of the Archdiocese of Manila, said Arevalo was free to file charges against anyone, and added that the supposed exposes was nothing new.

The Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway, a badly needed 94.5-kilometer roadway project aimed at easing traffic congestion in Central Luzon, has successfully hurdled a major stumbling block, the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA) said. The P19 billion (US$352 million) project has almost completed the right-of-way (ROW) acquisition process, the agency said.

"The ROW acquisition process has reached more than 90 percent. More than 50 percent of the remaining areas for acquisition, particularly in the areas to be affected in the Subic-to-Clark segment of the superhighway has already been acquired." BCDA secured the right of way from local communities, including residential areas and business establishments that would be affected by the construction of the tollway.

At the same time, the different local communities in Central Luzon helped fast-track the ROW process. Construction of the 44km Clark-Tarlac segment is expected to start before the end of the year, while the Clark-Subic route will commence next March. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) is to account for 85 percent of the funding, while BCDA will provide the remaining 15 percent.

Development in the Subic-Clark-Tarlac area has been strangled by traffic. The expressway is seen to provide a direct and efficient road connection between the major development areas. The project has been divided into two packages. Package I involves the Subic to Clark portion while Package II, the portion from Clark to Tarlac. Under Package I, the areas to be acquired include 305 hectares for the expressway, another 50 hectares for five interchanges and an additional 20 hectares for the business and service areas, or a total land acquisition of 375 hectares.

For Package II, the areas to be acquired include 225 hectares for the 44.4km expressway, 90 hectares for nine interchanges and 20 hectares for the business and service areas, or a total of 365 hectares. The project is expected to spur economic development in Central Luzon and provide a direct, efficient and nearly exclusive road connection between major economic zones in Central Luzon.

Swiss approves return of Marcos' $683M to gov't
Posted: 11:15 PM (Manila Time) | Aug. 06, 2003
Agence France-Presse

SWISS authorities have approved the handing over of 683 million dollars in Swiss bank accounts of the deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos to the Philippine government, it was announced in the Philippines Wednesday.

Swiss federal authorities informed their Philippine counterparts in a meeting in Zurich on Tuesday that the Philippine Supreme Court ruling awarding the money in the government's favor last month fulfilled earlier conditions set by Switzerland for the transfer of the money.

The 683 million dollars, including interest, represents the biggest known chunk of the Marcos assets that he allegedly stole from state coffers during his 20 years of mostly authoritarian rule.

The money was traced to Swiss bank accounts after a popular revolt in 1986 toppled Marcos from power and sent him into exile. The Swiss courts previously agreed to have the Marcos money held in escrow in the Philippines until local courts made a final ruling on who was the real owner of the funds.

"The Philippines may now dispose of the Marcos assets," said a statement from the Swiss federal office of justice, released by the Philippine government. However the Swiss government said that some 10 million dollars in Swiss deposits of known Marcos allies would remain frozen.

The Swiss have urged Manila to file criminal charges against the alleged Marcos cronies to prove that the 10 million dollars that remains frozen, really belongs to government. The Philippines has accused Marcos and his cronies of looting billions of dollars from state coffers during the 20-year Marcos rule. Marcos died in exile in 1989 and never faced criminal charges.

The Philippine Supreme Court, ruling on the funds in escrow, ruled in July that Marcos could not have legally acquired the funds with his known lawful income, and awarded the funds to Manila.

Absurd Coup Has A Sting In The Tail
The Asia Times
July 29, 2003
By A Lin Neumann

Sunday's shopping-mall putsch in the Philippines gave us just what we have come to expect from the failed Philippine political system: absurdist entertainment. Some 300 heavily armed soldiers stole through the night, apparently unnoticed despite a week of coup warnings preceding the event, seized the richest chunk of the capital city, cordoned off their prize with explosive charges and proceeded to hold forth on their gripes to a rapt television audience.

"We are not attempting to grab power - we are just trying to express our grievances," one of their leaders, Lieutenant Antonio Trillanes, told reporters as the group detailed alleged abuses of power and corruption in the ranks of the armed forces. At the conclusion of this soap opera, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, on the eve of her annual State of the Nation address, asserted her claim to legitimacy and raised her hands in triumph, a broad smile on her face, when the rebellion ended.

"I assure the world that this event does not in any way injure our national security and political stability," she said. "Once more, this has been a triumph for democracy." Arroyo is dead wrong in saying the country's stability was not hurt. This replay of the many coup attempts against the Corazon Aquino government in the 1980s is more than just made-for-TV melodrama. It is a demonstration that, at its core, the Philippines seems to be a country that remains unreliable, unstable and, very possibly, ungovernable.

This latest fiasco comes just two weeks after convicted terrorist Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, said to be a key link to al-Qaeda, walked out of a Manila jail cell apparently unnoticed by his sleeping guards. That a major terror figure jailed by a key US ally could simply stroll away from captivity pointed to the porous nature of the corrupt Philippine security apparatus and was a major embarrassment to both Manila and Washington.

The shopping-center stare-down is more than an embarrassment. Arroyo's government is reaping the whirlwind sown by its own popularly backed successful coup against the corrupt, but lawfully elected, regime of her predecessor, Joseph Estrada. That event, in January 2001, saw a coalition of political, church and military leaders short-circuit a stalled impeachment process by seizing power in the streets with military support to install then-vice president Arroyo in power.

Estrada remains in jail on corruption charges. Arroyo loyalists seemed to worry on Sunday that this coup could catch fire and depose their boss. "So far the situation is in hand," a senior intelligence official told Asia Times Online by telephone during the Sunday crisis. "But we have to worry about popular support spreading." Could that happen? "It is always a possibility," said the official. Arroyo will likely not be forcibly removed from office. She is unpopular but probably not that unpopular, and besides, the joint pillars of the Catholic Church and business that brought her to power have not entirely dropped their support for her. They seem content to wait for the 2004 elections, in which she has promised not to run.

Still, the laments of the dissatisfied and idealistic young officers resonate strongly and underscore the many seemingly insoluble crises besetting the United States' chief ally in Southeast Asia. That raising grievances through force of arms is considered a viable option by elite young officers is itself a dramatic example of how far the rule of law has been eroded in the Philippines and how deeply corruption undermines confidence in the country's many failed institutions.

"They are absolutely right in what they are saying, and unfortunately they will get nowhere," said a wealthy Filipino businesswoman reached by phone on Sunday. "These officers are just trying to change things." Their demands, their concerns, their excellent command of English and their status as graduates of the elite Philippine Military Academy put these young officers in the tradition of charismatic reformists trying to change a corrupt system. They are very similar to the young captains and majors who led the military revolt against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.

Now the soldiers, many of them combat veterans, complain that senior military officers are colluding with Muslim rebel groups in the south, supplying them with weapons and materiel. The government, they say, even staged a deadly bombing in Mindanao recently in order to strengthen calls for more aid from Washington. Arroyo has now ordered an investigation into the charges but, sadly, there is nothing new in such allegations and they have long been talked about in diplomatic, intelligence and military circles in Manila.

Gracia Burnham, the former American missionary who was held hostage by Abu Sayyaf rebels for more than a year before a botched rescue attempt saved her but killed her husband, said nearly the same thing in a recent book. "You may wonder how such a group as the Abu Sayyaf seemed to be well supplied with weaponry. Were their al-Qaeda friends sending them supply boats in the middle of the night? No, no - nothing so exotic as that," Burnham wrote in her book In the Presence of My Enemies, published in May. "The Abu Sayyaf told us [its] source was none other than the Philippine army itself ... I was amazed. The fact that such firepower could quite possibly wind up killing one's fellow soldiers seemed not to matter at all."

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, US military aid to the Philippines was increased to more than US$100 million from just $1.9 million the previous year in order to combat Abu Sayyaf. In May, when Arroyo visited Washington, President George W Bush pledged an additional $65 million in aid to battle terrorists, 30 helicopters and heightened status for the Philippines as a "major non-NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] ally" of Washington.

With many of the young officers prosecuting that "war on terror" in revolt against the government and a chief terror suspect on the run, Bush may have trouble getting new aid through Congress. But it is not only Manila's security relationships that stand to suffer from the further unraveling of confidence in the government. The Philippine economy, long in the doldrums, is likely to be pushed even farther off the radar screens of investors.

"This comes close to what I would call a worst-case scenario," said Peter Wallace, a leading business consultant in Manila. "But the Philippines is already a subsistence economy and things cannot get much worse than they already are. In a subsistence economy you are just getting by, and that describes the Philippines." If these young officers represent a core of resentment in the fractious military, the stage could be set for the Philippines to return to the years of instability and negative growth rates that characterized the post-Marcos period.

While countries such as South Korea and Thailand have largely solved the deadly cycle of military intervention in politics, the Philippines has yet to implement an effective method of democratic transition - leaving the military as a crucial arbiter of power. Since Marcos declared martial law in 1972, only two Philippine presidents, Estrada and retired General Fidel Ramos, have been elected to office.

With elections scheduled for next year, things might get even worse. Two of the leading contenders are celebrities - a newscaster and an action star - and neither has any substantial experience in government. The real loser in all of this, of course, is the Philippine public, already battered by rampant poverty, neglected infrastructure, overpopulation and a host of other ills. It does not look set to get any better any time soon. "The reputation of the country is hitting its nadir," said Today newspaper in an editorial after the Sunday rebellion. "The question the citizen must ask is that with things such a mess, what would make this country worth wanting to rule?"

US raises pledge to $50M for gov't-MILF peace deal
Posted:11:25 PM (Manila Time) | Jul. 09, 2003
By Gil C. Cabacungan
Inquirer News Service

PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Wednesday said the United States has promised to provide more development funds for Mindanao if the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front forge a final peace agreement. She said the US has pledged to give at least 30 million dollars this year, another 20 million dollars next year and "even more once the ink on the final peace agreement has dried."

US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone said Wednesday that Washington was ready to help fund peace efforts in Mindanao and to bring in experienced US diplomats to help with talks with the MILF as part of its global effort to fight terrorism. But the financial aid will only be made available if there is a final peace agreement, he said.

Ms Macapagal said that financial support from the US as well as corporate donors and the Philippines' official development partners "makes the search [for peace] easier.'' She said that with the peace funds, the country's strategic partnership with the US has come full circle, "from an alliance against terrorism to an alliance for peace."

"This is part of the new perspective of political and economic security in the Asia Pacific that has emerged in the post-Iraq war period,'' the President said in a statement. In an interview with dzRB radio, the government's chief negotiator Eduardo Ermita said he was hopeful that his rebel counterpart would realize that adequate funds would be made available to ensure that the MILF would meet its objective of improving the lives of Mindanao's people.

Ricciardone said the US, through the quasi-government US Institute for Peace, is prepared to "witness how the two parties will make commitments, increase confidence (in) each other and keep those commitments" and "underwrite peace and conditions that permit that."

He said the US role will be to "supplement, not to supplant" the efforts of Malaysia, which has taken the principal role in trying to bring the government and the MILF to the negotiating table. He said the US Congress has already allocated 30 million dollars "support the peace process in Mindanao." The funds will be in addition to the 74 million dollars development aid already provided this year through the US Agency for Development, more than half of which went to Mindanao.

But the aid "will only be available if there's peace, if there's an end to violence in the area," said Wendy Chamberlin, the USAID's assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East.

U.S. playing critical role in campaign against Muslim insurgents
San Francisco Chronicle
July 6, 2003
By Glen Martin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Zamboanga City, Philippines -- In his cramped office at a military base here, U.S. Army Maj. Guy Lemire waved away a squadron of droning flies and glanced out the window at a couple dozen Philippine soldiers cooling down from a day of weapons exercises and physical training in the sweltering 95-degree heat.

Chickens and goats wandered near a row of ramshackle barracks that housed some of the 2,000 Philippine troops being trained by U.S. Special Forces under Lemire's direction. Most of them are stationed on the southwestern coast of Mindanao, the scene of a long-running and bloody struggle between the government and Muslim separatists - some of whom reportedly have links with al Qaeda.

But Lemire, commander of special forces for the Joint Operations Task Force of the Philippines, took pains to make one thing clear: "We're trainers, not advisers," the crew-cut Pacifica native said emphatically. "We do not engage the enemy. We do not go into the field."

Nevertheless, the United States, as part of its war on terror, is playing a crucial role in the fight against Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines. In the process, it is regaining a foothold in a nation that unceremoniously kicked out U.S. troops a decade ago - and raising alarms not only among the rebels but among Filipinos still bristling at America's long military presence in their country.

Two years ago, Washington undertook a mission to help the government eliminate a small band of insurgents called Abu Sayyaf, or "Father of the Sword," who had become notorious for kidnapping for ransom - and sometimes decapitating - Filipinos and foreigners alike.

About 1,200 special forces were dispatched to train troops of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and advise them in the field. Emphasizing counterterrorism and light infantry techniques, the mission - called "Balikatan" ("shoulder-to-shoulder") - has scored at least tactical successes in the fight to quash the rebels. The Philippine military says it has reduced the insurgents from a force of 1,000 or more to a gang of 100 to 300. Abu Sayyaf remains a threat, but most of its members have been chased off to the far islands of the Sulu archipelago, and the last of their hostages escaped last month.

Now Manila has set its sights on a more entrenched foe - the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a force of roughly 13,000 combatants, with wider public support among Moros (Muslims), that has vowed to turn the island of Mindanao into an Islamic state.

Since the beginning of the year, the government estimates, at least 83 civilians have died from bombings the government blames on rebels and in cross fire between AFP troops and the insurgents. The rebels deny any part in the bombings, but their claims were undermined by the reported discovery two weeks ago of nearly 1,000 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives at an alleged MILF bomb-making site.

As many as 400,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, and kidnappings by MILF renegades known as "the lost commands" and a shadowy group called the Pentagon Gang have become commonplace.

More germane from the American point of view are recent testimonials by captured militants that the MILF has ties to groups linked to al Qaeda - notably Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian group suspected of carrying out last year's bombing of a Bali nightclub that killed almost 200 people, including two Americans and many other foreign tourists.

The connection has drawn the interest of American anti-terrorism officials, but some analysts warn against applying the terrorist label too liberally. "You can see a rhetorical drift among U.S. policy-makers," said Catharin Dalpino, a fellow with the Brookings Institution and an expert on Southeast Asian insurgency movements who recently testified before a U.S. congressional subcommittee on the Mindanao conflict.

"For example, connections have been established with the MILF and Abu Sayyaf, and from there to al Qaeda," Dalpino said, "so a reduction has been made - the MILF equals al Qaeda equals the enemy. But it's not necessarily that simple. Separatism is not always terrorism. The governments of the region want to equate separatism with terrorism, but the U.S. should resist that. If anything, we need firewalls between U.S. and Philippine government policy. We are overeager to view any (regional) insurgency as an act of terror against us."The United States had a military presence in the Philippines for nearly 100 years until 1992, when the Philippine Congress voted to kick U.S. troops out of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, both on the northern island of Luzon.

But as the war on terror draws America back in, it is pumping tens of millions of dollars into the fight against Muslim insurgents. Last year, Washington gave the Philippines about $70 million for training and ordnance. Included were five Huey helicopters and 15,000 M-16 rifles. Then on May 19 this year, during a visit to Washington by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, President Bush declared the Philippines a major non-NATO ally and pledged still more military aid.

The $356 million aid package includes 30 Huey helicopters, $30 million for counterterrorism equipment and training, $30 million in development assistance and support for peace negotiations with the MILF, and $25 million to fund a combat engineering unit, plus unspecified funds for operations against Abu Sayyaf.

At this camp and at other bases near Zamboanga, American special forces will train four battalions of AFP soldiers in the upcoming year, Lemire said, "and we have force multipliers built into that, which means we're training leaders to train still more troops." "We're here to teach (the government forces) the fundamentals of moving, shooting and communicating," said the lanky officer.

Washington has been emboldened by the early signs of success in the campaign against Abu Sayyaf, which had terrorized nearby Basilan, as well as neighboring islands in the Sulu Archipelago and Zamboanga City on Mindanao. Though the rebels espoused an Islamic liberationist ideology, they acted more like simple brigands, emphasizing mass kidnappings. Their signature method of killing: decapitation by bolo, the slightly parabolic bush knife unique to the Philippines.

Among those the group took hostage were Jeffrey Schilling of Oakland, American missionaries Gracia and Martin Burnham, and Guillermo Sobero of Riverside County. Schilling and Gracia Burnham made it out alive. Martin Burnham died during a military rescue attempt, and Sobero was beheaded. In their campaign to quash Abu Sayyaf, American special forces trained Philippine soldiers and sometimes served as advisers in the field. While AFP troops did most of the fighting, the Americans sometimes provided air support.

In one of the mission's most daring operations, according to military sources, AFP soldiers with U.S. troops backing them up in helicopters tracked down and killed one of Abu Sayyaf's top leaders - known by the nom de guerre of Abu Sabaya - by using sophisticated tracking devices to home in on his cell phone. Basilan's main military base - a modest compound set in a grove of coconut palms where fighting cocks wander the parade ground - is tranquil these days. But that's a recent development.

According to Philippine press reports, about 60 AFP troopers died in Basilan between 2001 and 2002; some had been beheaded. Many of the survivors still bear the scars of battle.

"I got this when my platoon was ambushed on June 2, 2002," said Staff Sgt. Mike Araham, a guard at the AFP's Basilan base, pointing to a huge divot on his upper right arm. Nearly his entire triceps has been blown off.

"We were caught in an ambush," Araham continued, his voice a monotone. "Abu got us in a cross fire, and we were pinned down in a 30-minute firefight. Eight soldiers were killed."

Technical Sgt. Nicholas Maya - a pseudonym, because he works in an AFP intelligence unit - has been fighting Abu Sayyaf for 12 years. It was Maya's elite squad of scout rangers that found the body of Sobero, the American executed by Abu Sayyaf in the Basilan jungle.

"By the time we got there, it had been several weeks since Sobero had been killed," said Maya, a rumpled, unassuming man with a shy smile and flat, fearless eyes. "He was mostly skeletonized. His torso had been hog-tied to a tree. After they cut off his head, they stuck it in another tree nearby."

The joint U.S.-Philippine military campaign has dealt a blow to Abu Sayyaf's brutal kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Though some units still roam Basilan's rugged interior, most have been driven from the coast, the capital city of Isabela, and Zamboanga City on Mindanao.

Simultaneously, the special forces embarked on a good works program to win the hearts and minds of Basilan's predominantly Muslim population. They carved nearly 40 miles of new road and an airstrip, constructed a jetty, dug a deep well for a community with no source of clean water and rebuilt Basilan General Hospital, providing new equipment and medicines.

With millions of dollars in new U.S. aid, American troops now hope to plow ahead with the next phase of Balikatan, tentatively set to take on the remnants of Abu Sayyaf later this year.

But questions about the wisdom of renewed American military involvement in the Philippines have put a crimp in their plans. As recently as May, the next mission was envisioned as a joint Filipino-U.S. combat operation; American troops, it was thought, would truly fight shoulder-to-shoulder with their AFP counterparts.

But Filipinos mobilized to protest the plan, the country's Senate balked, saying the Constitution prohibits the use of foreign troops for combat. Arroyo withdrew her support, and the United States indicated that it would rather train troops than fight after all.

Nevertheless, Maj. Gen. Roy Kyamko, commander of the Philippine military's Southern Command Base in Zamboanga, said the Basilan campaign defined an effective strategy for dealing with Islamic militants in the Philippines: Give troops the intensive training they need to fight effectively, unleash them for relentless pursuit and simultaneously provide aid to the civilian population.

Although this approach is not unlike policies that have failed to eliminate entrenched insurgencies around the world, from Vietnam to Colombia, Kyamko remains optimistic about its prospects. "Basilan has become the model, and we will do the same thing in Jolo (the capital of Sulu Island)," Kyamko said. "We have already reduced Abu Sayyaf to a narrow corridor of activity. They will soon have no options left."Despite public protests over the presence of American forces, most Philippine polls show strong support for Balikatan and opposition to the MILF and other armed Muslim groups.

But those polls reflect a nation of 85 million people that is 92 percent Christian and only 5 percent Muslim. Even on Mindanao, only about 25 percent of the 20 million inhabitants are Muslim, but many of its provinces are predominantly Muslim; in Sulu, the figure runs about 90 percent. And the nation's Muslims are highly skeptical of both Philippine and U.S. military intentions.

"A cornerstone of Islam is fair treatment, but the government's treatment of Muslims has been anything but fair," said Baicon Cayoncat-Macaraya, a Muslim facilitator with the Silsilah Institute, a group based in Zamboanga that supports dialogue between Christians and Muslims. "The government says we're one republic, but what they're doing divides the people," said Cayoncat-Macaraya, a petite woman who wears an elegant head scarf in observance of her Islamic beliefs.

Muslim grievances extend to the original Spanish conquest of the Philippines in the 16th century. Government policy has always favored Christian over Muslim interests, say the Moros. Their rich farmland has been seized by Christian colonizers, and they have been reduced to a minority in their own homeland. "Balikatan is obviously a device to apply U.S. policies on the war on terror directly to the Philippines," said Amirah Ali Lidasan, the secretary general for the Moro-Christian Peoples Alliance. "That may be fine for the U.S., but it's not necessarily in the best interest of the Philippines."

The military campaign "ignores the fact that for many Muslims, this is a civil war, a war of people seeking self-determination and a better life," he said. "These are rights that are internationally recognized."Even though the remnants of Abu Sayyaf are still at large, many people on Basilan say they haven't felt so safe in 25 years. "I almost can't believe it - no gunfire, no explosions. It feels like an illusion," said Jesus Raniel Mon, a local surgeon. "There is still violence and fighting in the interior, but things are basically stable around here (on the coast). It's wonderful."

Most of Mon's childhood memories are of war: firefights, bombings, kidnappings, summary executions. The situation was no better when he returned to the island after college and medical school to become a surgeon at Basilan General Hospital. "At this point, I'm an accomplished trauma surgeon," said Mon, who looks much younger than his 33 years - except for his eyes. They seem like those of a far older man, one who has seen every horrific thing the world can do to a human body.

"I've had plenty of practice," he said. "Bullet wounds and shrapnel cases were the order of the day." Since the U.S.-Philippine offensive against Abu Sayyaf, he has fewer cases like that. "To tell you the truth, the silence is deafening," said Mon. "I'm really not used to the quiet, the peace."

But on the ferry to Zamboanga from Basilan, Maya took the long view of the conflict. He pointed to several islands looming to the east of Basilan. A light mist rose off the Sulu Sea, and schools of small fish leaped and glittered under the torrid sun. The islands looked peaceful and inviting - deceptively so. "Abu Sayyaf has been beaten back into the hills on Basilan," said Maya, "but there are plenty of them over there." He pointed to another island, barely visible on the horizon. "And over there, too. Still plenty of terrorists. Still plenty of fighting to do."

Amelia Juico Gordon Named PEARL S. BUCK International Woman of the Year
PERKAISE, Pennsylvania
June 14, 2003

Amelia Juico Gordon, the "mother" of 54 children left behind by American servicemen in the former Subic Naval Base, will be honored with the prestigious 2002 Pearl S. Buck International Woman of the Year Award on Pearl S. Buck International Day today.

Mrs. Gordon, former Olongapo mayor and assemblywoman, had legally adopted 54 children, some of them literally left at her doorsteps. She had also touched the lives of thousands more, as the founder of the Boys Town and Girls Home, which provides care and shelter for orphaned Filipino children of American descent, popularly called "Amerasians."

Previous Pearl S. Buck Women of the Year awardees include former President Corazon Aquino, former United States First Lady and now Sen. Hillary Clinton and legendary actress Audrey Hepburn. Nominees for this year's awards included Barbara and Laura Bush, mother and wife, respectively, of US President George Bush; Dana Cheney, wife of US Vice President Dick Cheney, and Mary Robinson of the United Nations, who was also cited for her work for Amerasian children.

Pearl S. Buck, the first woman to be awarded the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, funded the PSBI, a non-sectarian development and humanitarian assistance organization dedicated to the improvement of the quality of life and expanding opportunities for educational, social, economic and civil rights.

Mrs. Gordon was married to James L. Gordon, the "father" of Olongapo City, who was assassinated for his crusade for an independent city of Olongapo. One of their five children, Richard, who conceived of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority as an alternative to the American presence in the former American naval base, became its first chairman. He is now tourism secretary. Richard's wife, Katherine, is now Olongapo City mayor. Another son, James Gordon Jr., is a congressman, representing the first district of Zambales and Olongapo City, while a grandson, Juan Carlos de los Reyes, is an Olongapo councilor.

Mrs. Gordon also served as chairman of the board of directors of the Philippine National Red Cross and chairman of the Olongapo Civic Action Group. She is active in many enterprises in her home city, especially those concerned with the welfare of abandoned children.

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