General News and Announcements

November 27, 2009

The following letter—condemning the massacre in Maguindanao Province, Philippines, on November 23, 2009, and calling for an end to the underlying culture of impunity—has been sent to the Philippine and Canadian governments by Patti Talbot, Acting Executive Minister, Justice, Global and Ecumenical Relations Unit, The United Church of Canada.

The United Church of Canada joins the Filipino people and the international community in condemning the massacre of more than 50 civilians on November 23 in the province of Maguindanao. We join the families of the victims in their grief and demand for justice.

As the massacre was committed in the context of the upcoming election in the Philippines, we are extremely concerned that violence will escalate and further undermine a clean, fair, and honest election which the Filipino people had hoped for.

Like the other cases of unsolved political killings and disappearances of hundreds of Filipinos, this massacre reminds us of the pervading culture of impunity and the lack of respect for human rights that have plagued the Philippines for years. The Maguindanao massacre is the consequence of the failure of Philippine government to take action on human rights violations. The extrajudicial killings of almost a thousand activists and human rights advocates since 2001 have remained unsolved to date. The United Church of Canada has, together with other Canadian churches and organizations, been campaigning for an end to the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. It has repeatedly called for the ending of the government counter-insurgency program Oplan Bantay Laya (OBL) which the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, found as the root cause of these extrajudicial killings. Under the counter-insurgency program, para-military groups such as the Citizen Armed Force Geographical Unit (CAFGU), CAFGU Active Auxiliary (CAA), and Civilian Volunteer Organization (CVO’s) were established and armed in the war to end the insurgency. According to reports from the Philippines, the Maguindanao massacre is the action of such a private army.

We call on the Philippine government to take immediate and decisive action to ensure that justice is dispensed swiftly. We call on the Philippine government to implement the following measures:

1. The creation of an independent, impartial international body to conduct a thorough investigation of the November 23, 2009, massacre and prosecute the people involved in this heinous crime;
2. The dismantling of the private armies of the political warlords in Maguindanao Province and in other parts of the country;
3. Rescinding immediately the Executive Order 546 created by the Philippine government in July 2006, which allows local politicians to convert and fund their private armies as legal entities or force multipliers in counter-insurgency program.

We urge the Philippine government to implement the above measures as a step toward peace based on justice, reconciliation and healing.