Philippine Senate report on Mamasapano deaths blasted

By Hader Glang

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines 

A Senate report failed to provide a deeper understanding of the background to the Mamasapano incident in which 44 police commandos died, and was mostly based on emotion rather than an objective interpretation of facts, says the chair of the Commission on Human Rights.

In a press statement emailed to The Anadolu Agency late Sunday, Loretta Ann Rosales commended the report, but disagreed with some its conclusions.

It “gives the appearance that emotion, rather than objectivity, prevailed in the articulation of its findings," she stated.

During the Jan. 25 operation, around 400 commandos descended on Mamasapano, only to run into members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and breakaway group the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).

The involvement of the MILF -- which signed a peace deal with the government in March last year -- had threatened to derail a peace process in the Philippines’ Muslim south.

Rosales underlined in her statement Sunday that the Senate had jumped to conclusions in describing the incident as a “massacre, not a miss-encounter.”

“While the Commission commiserates with the families of the victims and acknowledges that the killing of the fallen 44 was unjustified, categorizing the incident as a ‘massacre’ is excessive,” Rosales said.

“The mere use of high-powered firearms and mortars does not automatically equate to cruelty, in as much as it was not clearly established who - between the MILF and BIFF - used what,” she continued.

“Moreover, this characterization also overlooks the fact that the SAF [Special Action Force] were armed, albeit outgunned. In other words, although their situation was dire, the SAF were not necessarily ‘helpless or unresisting,’” she said.

"Worse, the Senate Report describes the situation as akin to walking into a trap. This equates the incident to an ambush, which is not borne out by the records because the MILF itself, much less the BIFF, was unaware of the arrival of the SAF.”

The Senate probe is part of an investigation -- aside from the police’s own Board of Inquiry -- to shed light on the tragic incident that led to the death of nearly 70 people.

Rosales underlined the failure of the Senate investigation to highlight the welfare of civilians who died in the firefight.

“One must not overlook the fact that outside of the fallen 44 there were five civilians and 17 MILF casualties, resulting in the death of a total of 66 Filipinos, including a child of 8 years of age,” she said.

She added that the commission had “consistently requested for full access” to investigate human rights violations against the victims.

Rosales said that the commission had also taken exception to the Senate report against the peace panels of the government and the MILF, as well as the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

She said they were dismayed at accusations thrown at the adviser and the peace panel for suffering an "excess of optimism — optimism that blinded them to negotiate a fair agreement for the government," citing the BBL [Bangsamoro Basic Law] as an example.

The pending law -- that will govern a proposed expanded political autonomous government in the Muslim south -- came as a result of a peace accord signed by the government and the MILF on March 27 last year.

“While the BBL may have its defects, a court of law has yet to rule on the legality of its provisions. That legal luminaries have weighed in on both sides of the argument is a clear indication that even experts are divided on the matter," said Rosales.

"In any case, the BBL is pending before Congress, precisely to give Senators and Members of the House of Representatives the opportunity to review its provisions."

She cited examples of other “internal conflicts" in countries worldwide that "take time to resolve.”

“In El Salvador, it took 12 years of fighting before the Government and the Frente Faribundo Marti de Liberacion Nacional managed to enter into the Chapultepec Agreement. In Northern Ireland, two decades of violence preceded the signing of the Belfast Agreement,” Rosales said.

She emphasized that “the complexity of the situation in Mindanao is no different.”

“The peace process is multi-faceted: it involves not merely the decommissioning of arms and the determination of the political status of those involved in or affected by the conflict, but also the establishment of non-monetary forms of reparations,” she said.

“While condemning what happened in Mamasapano, the Commission must caution against broad statements which serve no purpose other than to polarize public opinion."

Rosales said the report merely painted the Mamasapano incident as black and white, without taking the considerations of understanding the intricacies and complexities of the southern peace process.

She said that tying the MILF leadership's failure to control its ground troops to insincerity in the peace process was wrong.

“The inability of the MILF leadership to control a few elements of the BIAF [Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Force] has nothing to do with its sincerity in entering into peace negotiations," she stated.

"The actions of a few rogue members cannot and should not be interpreted as the actions of the whole."

Rosales said Senators could have weighed on the political maturity of the MILF for its willingness to forego its armed struggle and agree to decommission its forces in exchange for a political settlement in Mindanao, which the organization has been fighting for in more than four decades.

“[The] Senate Report trivializes the maturity with which the MILF has chosen to deal with the situation, i.e. by forging on ahead with the peace process and signing the protocol on the decommissioning of its weapons and forces.”

She added that such acts had not gone unnoticed at the level of the United Nations, "which has, accordingly, commended on the political maturity of the MILF and communicated the same to the Chairperson of the Commission."