Physician protests 800 deaths in the Philippines
By KEVIN SPURGAITIS
The morning of July 31, 2006, began like any other for Dr. Chandu Claver. In Tabuk, 315 km north of the Philippines capital, Manila, Claver and his wife, Alyce, drove their daughter, Cassandra, to school in their family Land Cruiser. The threesome journeyed across familiar terrain: steep slopes; sprawling, green valleys; Helen’s Farm and Chico Diversion Dam. Then down to the lower barangays, and through the municipality’s commercial center, passing street jewelers, loomweavers and rattan basket makers. Nearing the end of their journey, the family drove by the much-loved landmarks of Tuga Catholic and St. Joseph Churches. Their morning couldn’t have been more usual and benign.
But suddenly, two vans — one dark-coloured and the other white — appeared from the sides of the highway, a mere 500 metres from a national police camp. “After cutting off my vehicle on the thoroughfare, two masked men poured out of the vans and started shooting at my family with high-powered rifles,” Claver says softly and matter-of-factly. “They just kept firing and firing at us through the front and side windows. . . . Glass and ejected shell casings were everywhere. . . . All I could do was shout for everyone to duck below the dashboard and seats until it was all over.”
Later that morning, paramedics rushed the family to the Kalinga Provincial Hospital, where Claver’s wife succumbed to 26 gunshot wounds. His seven-year-old daughter only suffered a scratch on her head but was traumatized by the attack. Claver, meanwhile, was left with a shattered arm and a “life in a million little pieces.”
A surgeon and family physician from an indigenous tribe in the Philippines’ Cordillera region, Claver has been described as a “doctor of the people.” Since 1984, the 49-year-old has practised medicine in remote barrios in the heavily militarized provinces of Kalinga and Apayao. There, he helped to set up community-based health programs here, often in the midst of ongoing clashes between insurgents and the country’s military. “I suddenly came face-to-face with civilian deaths and injuries, as well as the evacuation of whole villages and its health consequences,” he says. Eventually, the physician took up human rights work, which he believes made him and his family targets for death squads.
Late last winter, Claver brought his campaign for justice to Canada as part of a five-member delegation from the Philippines sponsored by justice organizations and churches, including The United Church of Canada. The delegation urged the Canadian and U.S. governments, as well as the UN Human Rights Commission to “strongly and unequivocally condemn extra-judicial executions of dissenters in the Philippines,” which they say have claimed 835 lives since 2001. Among those murdered are human rights workers, lawyers, journalists, priests, ministers, lay people and Roman Catholic Bishop Alberto Ramento.
“We are looking for justice for our dead relatives,” Claver says. “We’re laying this down on the doorstep of my country’s presidential palace. As the commander in chief, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has accountability in these cases.”
The Philippines has long been in a political tsunami. Even the return of democracy in 1986 was hog-tied by massive national debt, government corruption, communist insurgency and a Muslim separatist movement. In January 2001, Arroyo’s own succession to the presidency was tainted with allegations of election rigging and double-dealing, along with violent protest. In response, she had dissidents and prominent political leaders arrested without warrants, staving off the first in a series of coup d’états — the most recent in March. The Arroyo administration, promising to “build a strong republic,” now seems set on toughening up the bureaucracy, improving the economy, lowering crime rates and intensifying counter-terrorism efforts.
Because of their experience with counter-insurgency and anti-secessionist campaigns — and their close relationship with the U.S. military — the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is considered one of the strongest, battle-hardened armies in the world. It has declared an all-out-war against the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The AFP maintains that many of the recent killings were part of an “internal purge” by communist guerrillas, who control parts of the archipelago nation.
In the first six months of 2006, at least 51 people were executed, compared to the 66 cited by Amnesty International during all of 2005. The shootings have rarely led to arrests, though. As such, Amnesty believes that the attacks are not random murders but a “politically motivated pattern of killings,” and says members of the security forces may have been “directly involved in the killings or else have tolerated, acquiesced to or been complicit in them.”
In February, UN fact-finder Philip Alston concurred, assailing the AFP for its role in supporting, training and arming paramilitary groups. The military is dedicated to the protection of the nation, he wrote in his report, but it has to put a stop to the killings. Alston and his team members also met with Dr. Chandu Claver, who told them that an effective witness protection program would help end the cycle of executions. “People are afraid to come forward to report killings. Everyone can be a target. There continues to be a lot of fear,” he said during his visit to Toronto.
Fifteen of the 835 people executed in the country since 2001 were members of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines, according to Bishop Eliezer Pascua, the general secretary of the church and member of the Filipino delegation to Canada. More than half of them, he says, “were very close to my heart, not only as my pastors but also as my friends.”
After seeing their bodies riddled with bullets, mutilated and disfigured, Pascua became an outspoken advocate for change in his homeland. “Many international organizations are finding that this could not have continued without the gross tolerance from the Arroyo government,” he says. “The president waited for 800 people to be killed before saying she would seriously look into this.”
Last summer, Arroyo set up a commission of inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo, to investigate the killings and make legislative proposals. Pledging to “break this cycle of violence once and for all,” she stated, “I have directed [the Melo Commission] to leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of justice . . . the victims and their families deserve justice to be served.”
Arroyo later lauded the Supreme Court for creating special courts that will deal exclusively with unexplained killings. In the document that authorized some 99 new tribunals, the Supreme Court said that “the political affiliation of the victim, the method of attack and the involvement of state agents” would be the benchmarks for identifying a political killing.
But with the military watching both human rights groups and rebels through the same gun sights, and with the government’s “no permit, no rally” policy quelling protests before general elections, the United Church’s partners in the Philippines say they still run the risk of being falsely detained — or murdered.
Claver says he still receives mysterious text messages warning him to watch out for himself and his family. He remains in constant hiding, surreptitiously moving from safe house to safe house. He sees his three young daughters, who are staying with relatives, only twice a month.
Recently, he was asked if he regretted the fallout on his family from his human rights work. There was a steely edge to his answer: “Everyone does what he or she has to do. Some unexpected tragedy might befall us but these are not predetermined.”
Pressuring the authorities for investigations is a way for a generation of Filipinos to render some form of justice and put the past behind them. As Claver wrote in an open letter following his wife’s murder, “Many lives have been taken and many more are in danger. But let us not wallow in despair or be paralyzed with fear. Let not the death of Alyce, and the others before her, be in vain.”
Originally published in the United Church Observer, April 2007
