Police name Arroyo ally as suspected massacre mastermind
Updated
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo is under enormous pressure to prosecute a close political ally, whom police have named as the top suspect in Monday's massacre in Mindanao. Police allege that Andal Ampatuan Junior masterminded the attack, in which 52 people were brutally murdered on their way to file candidate papers for next year's elections. Mr Ampatuan is a local mayor on Mindanao, and a member of an influential family that's long had ties with the president. He hasn't been arrested or formally charged, but police allege he led the estimated 100 gunmen who abducted and killed the relatives and aides of a rival politician, along with a group of journalists. President Arroyo's pledged to hunt the killers down and bring them to justice.
Presenter: Corinne Podger
Speaker: Neri Colmenares, opposition MP and human rights lawyer with Counsels for the Defence of Civil Liberties in the Philippines (CODAL)
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COLMENARES: A complete sense of impunity in the country where people commit crimes and get away with it has led and encouraged massacres like this to the extent that more than 40 people have been killed in one day, which is still shocking by Philippine standards even if we have been subject to extrajudicial killings since President Arroyo came to power.
PODGER: Now up till now this has been seen as just another brutal chapter in the bitter rivalry between two powerful Mindanao families. But the top suspect named by police, Andal Ampatuan Junior, is a member of President Arroyo's ruling coalition; his father is credited with helping secure votes for the President in past elections. How has that been received in the Philippines?
COLMENARES: Everybody knows that and recognises that the Ampatuans are her allies, so everybody's demanding that she shouldn't play a role at all in the investigation, and that the President should really come in and decisively arrest whoever perpetrated the heinous crime and notwithstanding the fact that they've given her votes in the previous elections.
PODGER: And how does all of this play out against the promises that Mrs Arroyo has made to end extrajudicial killings?
COLMENARES: Well President Arroyo and the government has actually not done anything on extrajudicial killings. There has been so many deaths, about one-thousand-200 since she came to power and not one has been convicted as the perpetrators have not been convicted. Because of the fact that impunity exists it's precisely as I mentioned why the government should be responsible in part for the killings in Mindanao. Impunity is when people commit crimes and they know they can get away with it, and that's precisely what happened in Mindanao. It's not the first time that people are killed in Mindanao, but there's been no conviction at all, no prosecution on the part of government against those who killed or committed violence in many areas of Mindanao.
PODGER: The President has declared a state of emergency on much of Mindanao; she has sent security forces there. Has that increased the sense of confidence or belief that those responsible for the massacre on Monday will be brought to justice?
COLMENARES: Well not really, the reason why people are thinking that way is because the President has proclaimed emergency rule before in 2006. She's proclaimed emergency rule and what she did was clamp down on the opposition. So people have become cynical with presidential actions in this year. However I think the outrage in the entire Philippines will probably force the hand of the President this time. Many believe that because of the outrage she will be forced to really take a decisive step. It will be laid on her doorstep the blame for these killings.
PODGER: You have national elections in six months now given that every one of the eight national polls since the end of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 has been marred by political violence, how are people feeling as these polls get closer? Are they nervous?
COLMENARES: Yes people are always nervous every time an election comes because of the violence that occurs. That's why for example on our part we are trying to ask foreign friends and those concerned to come in as international observers. If there are countries who can come in and act as observers because in our experience it lessens the violence the moment foreign observers missions are there. But yes, the election is fraught with tension not only because of the violence that is expected to happen, but also because people suspect that the President is not willing to step down from power. So all this makes people tense actually and in a tense situation things can go out of hand. But we still hope really that the Mindanao situation will not escalate and that a peaceful and orderly election will happen next year in 2010.
