Phils govt says no to amnesty for Abu Sayyaf

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ERMITA: Well the New Peoples' Army is the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines, their objective is to overthrow the government because they believe in their ideology, the communist ideology, they bleieve in their political belief of changing the government through the force of arms. The Moro National Liberation front is composed of Moro rebels from Mindanao who would like to secede, meaning establish their own Moro Republic or Islamic government. So they're also fighting for their ideology and political belief. The Abu Sayyaf is nothing but a group of criminals and terrorists and the amnesty will not be extended to such common criminals and terrorists who are engaged in kidnapping and other heinous crimes

WERDEN: But the assumption is they're involved in those kidnappings to make an independent Islamic state, you're rejecting that?

ERMITA: No, I don't think that's a correct assumption because it's not necessarity true that the Abu Sayyaf who are terrorist groups identify for that matter with Jemaah Islamiyah in our neighbouring countries and for that matter have linkeages with Al Qaeda , all they want to do is to show terror and fear among the population by doing kidnapping especially kidnapping for ransom, for them to have resources for their activities to expand their group and it has been known for example that they have committed heinous crimes as beheading their captives, both civilians and military that is why they will not qualify for the extended amnesty.

WERDEN: So why did Senator Richard Gordon propose to grant them amnesty and why is it in the Philippines media is considering giving them amnesty.

ERMITA: No, Senator Gordon, merely said that with the release of Eugenio Vagni, the ICRC hostage, maybe he said government should extend social and economic assistance and development in the depressed areas in order to neutralise these troublemakers and we merely said that development of communities especially in depressed areas is part of the approach in fighting insurgency in this secessionist group, the right hand effort with the police and the military and the left hand effort through social and economic development assistance but when that was explained in that manner the writer took it to mean that we were agreeing to the proposal of Senator Gordon that amnesty will be granted to these people but that's not true, we merely said that we are for the introduction of development assistance in depressed areas because the source of insurgency and secessionism is abject poverty and therefore maybe we can reach out to them and it will lessen the number of recruits fighting government by introducing social and economic development activities.