Text Fwd: [nousbases] US Troops Open Fire In Philippines

* Text informed by CAFCA on Sept. 20, 2009

Shooting by American troops lawful—military
By Tarra Quismundo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 20, 2009

THE PHILIPPINE military maintained Saturday that American soldiers acted within the bounds of the law when they fired their machine guns in self-defense following an explosion believed targeted at them at the Jolo pier in Sulu on Monday.

The avowal was in reaction to the claim by the leftist group, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), which said that United States forces, stationed in Mindanao as part of anti-terror operations jointly undertaken with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), were cleared of any liability too quickly while questions on their continued presence here had yet to be settled.

“It is part of their right to defend themselves. They are targets for liquidation or harm by terrorists. It’s normal that they also take precautionary measures to defend themselves,” said Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner Jr., military spokesman.

He said the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which sets the parameters covering the conduct of soldiers while engaged in training exercises and intelligence or technical assistance in the country, did not bar American troops from carrying firearms.

“They are allowed to carry guns. The VFA only says they cannot engage in combat, but they have the right to defend themselves,” said Brawner, adding that a Philippine investigation found nothing unlawful about the discharge of firearms from US guns.

“We also expect that it is a natural tendency for soldiers when under attack … that the immediate reaction is to seek cover, determine the source of attack and fire back,” Brawner told the Philippine Daily Inquirer when reached by phone Saturday.

Bayan, which had long called for the abrogation of the VFA, expressed concern over the VFA Commission’s speedy resolution of the incident wherein it concluded that the discharge was “a justified response” to a threat.

While US military officials said that their troops fired just a single burst, civilian witnesses said arms were let loose for about 20 minutes and described the US soldiers’ response as an “overreaction.” The fusillade damaged a mosque.

“The presidential VFA Commission seems to be working on damage control. It is amazing that in a matter of 24 hours, they have cleared the US forces from any liability, despite numerous eyewitness accounts,” Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said in a statement.

“The impression we’re getting is that a coverup is in the works,” he said.

But Brawner said that the investigation went through a process and that local officials took part in it.

Denying an unfair investigation was conducted, Brawner said: “In the first place, in order for a liability to be established, there should be a complaint. But there was no complainant.”

Text Fwd: [nousbases-info] Ten Years of the VFA: An Assessment

Text informed by Agatha Haun on May 30, 2009

Ten Years of the Visiting Forces Agreement: An Assessment

by

Roland G. Simbulan

Centennial Professor, University of the Philippines &

Senior Fellow, Center for People’s Empowerment in Governance (CENPEG)

The presence of heavily armed U.S. soldiers even in the remote areas of the Philippine countryside is now becoming a normal part of the local scenery. As we mark the ten years (1999-2009) of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), we see that it has made our countryside a free-fire zone for so-called joint military exercises using live ammunition and artillery that have killed, injured or maimed our people and children. These foreign troops enter our territory without passports or visas, without clearances from our customs or immigration authorities, without quarantine clearances from our health authorities, with neither licenses nor registration for driving their vehicles in our country. They have gotten away with murder, attempted murder, rape, harassment of our women, maltreatment of our countrymen, and destruction of our environment. A document called the “Visiting Forces Agreement” has given them the right to do so.

More than 40,000 U.S. troops have entered our territory in more than 25 provinces this way since the VFA was put in place in 1999. They came in more than 78 U.S. naval vessels and fleets which include nuclear-armed aircraft carriers, cruise ships, submarines, in clear violation of the Philippine constitutional prohibition on the entry of nuclear weapons in any part of Philippine territory.

The VFA is the most anomalous aspect of our foreign relations today, 17 years after the historic dismantling of the U.S. military bases in 1992. It is a shameless document that is one-sided because it is not reciprocal. It denigrates the Philippine constitutional provision about “equal protection of the laws” by the very fact that it grants special rights and privileges to armed foreign troops on Philippine territory. The VFA has been an indignity to our people, a travesty to our people’s rights and rule of law. This is why Filipinos from all walks of life all over the country continue to protest this so-called treaty as long as it is in place. It reminds us that we are still not really sovereign in our own territory as a nation.

The VFA is thus and indeed a bad example for other proposed or pending military agreements with other countries such as the Philippine-Australian Status of Visiting Forces Agreement still pending in the Senate, or similar draft agreements with Singapore and New Zealand. These are ostensibly using the VFA with the United States as a model.

Is the VFA legal and constitutional?

Clearly, the 2000 and 2009 Supreme Court decisions on the VFA only allows for joint military exercises like the Balikatan, and small unit joint training exercises. It does not allow basing rights or facilities to be constructed for transient U.S. forces visiting the Philippines. It also does not allow U.S. forces to be involved in counterinsurgency operations in the country.

Basing rights or privileges

But since 2003, U.S. congressional budgetary documents have referred to the installation of “forward or advance operating bases” being set up in the Philippines. These have meticulously been exposed by Focus on the Global South researcher Herbert Docena in several articles (Docena, 2006). The facilities for the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (formerly called the Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines), now deployed all-year round in the country, have been beefed up with the U.S. Department of Defense contracting the American defense contractor Global Contingency Services LLC with a US$14.4-million (or P650 million pesos) contract for “base development” in Mindanao. These facilities which have been constructed are described by no less than official U.S. documents and in their Pentagon lexicon as “forward operating bases” or “advance operating base,” especially those that have been set up in various parts of Mindanao inside Philippine Army camps. In reality, these are permanent operating, support, intelligence and training bases set up in direct support for Philippine counterinsurgency operations. Are these really allowed by the provisions of the VFA and by the Philippine Supreme Court?

Role in counter-insurgency activities

The Philippines, under the cover of Balikatan exercises, is being used as a laboratory for the latest U.S. counterinsurgency tactics and strategies in the Philippines, which are later to be used in other U.S. military interventions in other countries. This includes the “security-development approach” in counter-insurgency. The traditional role of the U.S. Army in overseas operations include “small unit training of local forces, civic action initiatives, psychological warfare”. But there are “non-traditional” operations which are implemented in conjunction with agencies responsible for development assistance like the USAID and other conduits like the U.S. Institute for Peace, the National Endowment for Democracy, etc.

General T. Galvin of the U.S. Army testified in U.S. Senate congressional hearings that U.S. Special Operations Forces are also used in “direct action”, including “small unit commando activities,” where “speed and surprise…dictate, otherwise they are for security assistance, combat intelligence and communications.” (Galvin, 1987) Or under a special Executive Order 12333 issued by the President of the United States since the 1980s, they can engage in covert surgical “special activities” beyond the training of local government forces as Mobile Training Teams (MTT).

U.S. military presence in the Philippines today relies heavily on covert U.S. military involvement through U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOFs), service intelligence organizations, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other covert U.S. intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) playing a central role. Other agencies include the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Peace Corps, which specialize in the “hearts-and-minds approach” using so-called humanitarian or non-lethal aid. Covert action includes unconventional warfare, intelligence operations and psychological operations (psy-ops) in target areas such as remote communities suspected of being “controlled or influenced by insurgents”. Their activities provide the fundamental elements in supporting local counterinsurgency operations.

Under the Visiting Forces Agreement, “U.S. civilian personnel directed by the U.S. Department of Defense” are also given special rights and privileges like their uniformed U.S. military counterparts. Their range of activities include economic, civic, military, diplomatic and political action, all aimed at achieving the political/psychological (psy-ops) objective to undercut a movement’s support base and destroy its credibility and influence to provide support for U.S. objectives. Humanitarian or civic action missions, in the form of medical/dental (MEDCAP) teams purportedly to meet human needs, are meant to penetrate local political infrastructures and achieve the objectives of psychological operations. This is what U.S. manuals on counterinsurgency say about these “non-lethal tools” for counterinsurgency and about the purposes of these activities (US Army, 1975).

This is also why U.S. intelligence operatives and counterinsurgency specialists under the coverage of the VFA now are seen freely roaming the General Headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and other AFP camps. They provide critical battlefield intelligence and communications/logistical support for large and small-unit local counterinsurgency operations.

Let us review the real role of the “humanitarian missions” of the U.S. Department of Defense. During the Philippine-American War, General Arthur McArthur (General Douglas McArthur’s father who served in the US Army during its “pacification” of the Philippines) made the following frank statement before the 57^th Congress of the United States:

“One of my purposes was to improve roads for strategic purposes entirely. I got $1 million gold for the purpose. Whatever incidental advantage arose to the community was, of course, in consequence of the military necessity. My view was to make passable roads during all seasons, so that by assembling troops at central points and connecting the outpost by wire, we could rapidly move from the rendezvous to the extremities, and thereby avoid the necessity of scattering into so many posts.”

United States Marines and Special Operations Forces are actually doing battlefield intelligence and psy-ops as they conduct infrastructure, civic action and “humanitarian missions” with USAID personnel in many parts of the country today, using the VFA as a cover. Meanwhile, the Philippine’s VFA Commission, which was ostensibly created to oversee the implementation of VFA provisions, including monitoring violations, has only become the principal apologist for the onerous agreement, while consistently covering up even the most brazen violations of the agreement by U.S. military forces.

Resistance to VFA

The people of Mindanao, especially in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, are waging a continuous campaign to stop U.S. military intervention—both covert and overt—in the internal conflict, which has only complicated the situation in the second largest island of the Philippines. Lately, the people of Bicol region have scored a tactical victory in the struggle against the restoration of U.S. military forces by forcing the rollback of 6,000 U.S. troops and forcing them to send instead a so-called 100-member U.S. military “humanitarian mission” in the Balikatan exercises. BAN Balikatan (Bikol Against Balikatan) and the SUMABA KA (Speak Out!) or Sorsogon United Movement for Peace Against Balikatan have successfully forced the retreat of BK ’09 into a defensive position. A people’s caravan that traveled in all of Bicolandia’s provinces highlighted a strong people’s resistance to the VFA which is being used as a camouflage to U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency and the restoration of de facto basing rights in the country.

The Filipino people will muster the will and determination to flush out foreign troops from our territory, as they mustered the will and power to dismantle U.S. military bases in 1991.

References:

Docena, Herbert (2006). Unconventional Warfare. Focus on the Global South. Also see Docena, Herbert, At the Door of the East (The Philippines in United States Military Strategy).

Galvin, T. General (1987). Testimony before th US Senate Committee on Armed Services. Feb. 23, 1987.

United States Army, (1975). Guide for the Planning of Counterinsurgency. Department of the Army, Wash. DC.

Text fwd: Filipinos protest US military pact

* Informed in StopNATO*

* Image source*
Same as the article below
'An anti-riot policeman (L) tries to disperse a group of students who gather in front of the US embassy in Manila to protest the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).'

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=89518&sectionid=351020406
Press TV, March 24, 2009
Filipinos protest US military pact

Filipino anti-riot police have clashed with a group of students who were
demanding the withdrawal of US troops from the Philippines.

Dozens of protesters, who gathered outside the US embassy in Manila on Tuesday
to protest a military treaty between the two countries, were injured in the
clash.

The Visiting Forces Agreement, known in the Philippines as VFA, covers the
conduct of troops in annual exercises between the US and the Philippines.

The protesters say the treaty does not grant equal rights to Filipino and
American citizens and treats Filipinos as "second-class citizens of the United
States."

The demonstrators pointed to the case of the US soldier, Lance Corporal Daniel
Smith, who was detained in 2006 after convicted of raping a Filipino woman.

The case strained military ties between Washington and Manila and fueled
anti-American sentiment in the Philippines.

The pact, regarding the treatment of US armed forces visiting the Philippines,
was ratified by the Philippines Senate in 1999.

The US is yet to approve the pact.
===========================
Stop NATO

* Related article*

Philippines: US To Lead Large-Scale War Games

Text Fwd: NICOLE'S RECANTATION SERVES U.S. AND ARROYO GOVERNMENT MOST

Text Fwd from Roland Simbulan, Agatha Haun on March 19, 2009

NICOLE'S RECANTATION SERVES U.S. AND ARROYO GOVERNMENT MOST

*Note: Below is GABRIELA Philippines' statement on Nicole's recantation*

The recantation of Subic rape victim Nicole serves mostly the interests of the United States and the Philippine government in their bid to spare the Visiting Forces Agreement from the growing people's clamor for the agreement's abrogation.

Nicole is not the first and will not be the last rape victim to recant. As a women's alliance that, for 25 years, has worked with women victims of violence, we have faced many such situations. The battle for justice, especially in a society as unjust as the Philippines, is never easy. This
rings more true when the enemy is not a mere criminal but a symbol of US dominance over the Filipinos and the accomplice to the crime is a Philippine government most servile to the whims of its master.

The Arroyo government can lie through its teeth and deny with all its might its hand in Nicole's recantation but its track record only proves otherwise. From the day the Subic rape became public, the Arroyo government has utilized all legal and political means to protect and absolve Smith. That the Arroyo government debauched justice by surreptitiously transferring
Smith to the US Embassy after Smith's conviction is enough proof of where the government stands on the Subic rape case. Currently, the Arroyo government, through its spokespersons, cannot even hide its apparent glee at having served its US master well.

The victim has always been not just Nicole but the Filipino people. The enemy has always been beyond L/Cpl. Daniel Smith but the United States government and its military. The accomplice has always been more than the three other US soldiers but the puppet Arroyo regime. The fight has always been more than justice for the crime of rape but justice for a people long-subjugated by the imperialist US.

The struggle for justice in the Subic rape case has never been just a single Filipino woman's battle for her dignity. It has been, and shall always be, the battle of a people united to reclaim our national dignity.

The fight will continue. The Filipino women and the Filipino people shall maintain its stance: *Justice for the Filipino people! Jail the rapist Smith! Junk VFA!*


*18 March 2009*

Nicole: A sister’s tough choice
Inday-Espina Varona Share
Today at 3:18pm

It was, in the parlance of negotiators, a lose-lose situation. Nicole, the woman raped by American serviceman Daniel Smith, the woman whose face the Inquirer bared cruelly on its front pages today, knew what awaited her.

And she was right. The insults, the slurs, the indignation rained as heavy as they did when PR hacks hired for the defense of Smith (and the government he serves) tried to justify a crime by painting Nicole as a woman of loose morals.

That Nicole practically damns herself the same way now does not excuse the stone throwing.

A woman of loose morals can be raped. Indeed, a woman seen by society as one with loose morals is most vulnerable to rape. A society that fumes at a woman’s attempt to live by her own rules will turn its eyes away and close its ears when men decide to impose the most humiliating punishment they can on this singular, defiant woman.

There’s a line in the Green Mile. To paraphrase: people who think themselves enlightened can perpetrate the most horrific deeds. By commission they do this; likewise, by omission.

Like many friends, I, too, would like to see a lopsided, onerous treaty provided rescinded. A country may open its doors to troops of a military ally if it helps build up its own defense capabilities; what makes the VFA unjust are the provisions clearly skewed towards the bigger power. Until the VFA treats erring American troops like erring Filipino troops, it remains
unacceptable. (One might point out that too many erring Filipino soldiers have walked away scot-free but we can’t have everything and just a slight evening out of the field is enough for me.)

But yearning for a noble goal – abolition of an onerous treaty – does not mean it is right for us to drag Nicole through the mud once more. There is no more self-serving, selfish comment than to wail we’ve been had because Nicole issued an affidavit virtually clearing Smith.

So she crumbled. So she groveled before might and the power of the American dream. So what? A close reading of the affidavit shows she doesn't say the rape NEVER happened. She just spouts what the defense wants her to say.

Many raped women have crumbled in the face of much, much less – say, the tears of an apologetic husband or boyfriend, or the pleas of a family tired of braving the sneers and leers, or just the mounting bills of a legal battle; or maybe just the pleas of one man’s mother, and/or the promise of marriage to make an “honest” woman of her -- with all the subtext of she-was-asking-for-it.

We in the media and people’s organizations know of tortured folk recanting on earlier testimony. It doesn’t make them allies of evil men; it simply means there were factors heavy enough to crush determination and courage.

Was it naïve of Nicole to expect aid from the Philippine government? Maybe. But many Filipinos do expect government or government officials to help them. Why are there long lines of supplicants at the gates of mayors and congressmen and governors?

Besides, it’s not just the government. People’s orgs and NGOs – even the media – are there to succor the afflicted. But our attention spans are also as short as the public’s. We are not evil; we just have other, “more important” things to attend to.

How many times have we in media done a round of mea culpa when discussing human rights? We admit we cannot always keep the lights shining on one particular case – and that often starts the slide to defeat. That does not make us in the media bad; we know the many reasons for this situation. If we can accept this, why cannot we accept the loneliness and bewilderment of the violated, their impatience and their hopelessness?

Likewise, I have been around these circles of aid-givers enough to know that there is some residual middle-class desire to expect people we help to be docile and grateful, when in truth the task of working for justice does not guarantee good manners and right conduct among those we seek to aid.

Oh yes, there are many do-gooders who can barely mask their pinched noses as they go about giving aid, and there are those whose faces turn red and mouths turn down when they are met with less than obsequious thanks in their tours of duty or because the people they help just can’t be bothered by the higher isms of the day. That’s not to denigrate aid givers as evil; just to
make them out as truly human, the same way the people they serve, Nicole included, are just as human.

The truth is, Nicole has walked a long, long way in this ordeal; longer than most women who have suffered rape.

Just a little over a week ago, I had to double check some documents from the Bacolod police because they initially seemed exaggeratedly negative. Of 36 cases of acts of lasciviousness report last year, only six were filed with the fiscal. Of 943 cases of violence against women, only 13 were filed in court. Of 26 rape cases, only six were filed. In the case minors, the ratio
was nine of 34 rape cases ending up in court.

Nicole, at least, braved cross-examination and the harsh glare of the media spotlight, including the baring of her real identity name.

She mustered the strength for this because many of us supported her – whether because rape alone was enough to stir us to outrage or because she was a vehicle to reach a higher goal.

And now she has crumbled. Why are we so irate? How many friends do we know who voluntarily joined this or that cause but dropped out after sometime? Do we sneer and call them traitors? Don’t we even share meals with those who now serve the government, no matter if the thought of this government makes us puke?

How many on Facebook were once firm believers in this or that cause? Nobody pressured us to join those causes, right? Did we face a mob when we decided to leave?

Well, Nicole never volunteered for the cause. She had to be raped to join it. She never asked to be poster girl for nationalists; she was made one by virtue of rape.

There are a million and one reasons for despair and hopelessness. A noble cause cannot always hold one above the waters. Nor will a lynching make our cause more right.

Nicole is not the enemy. Let's not treat her like one.

Text fwd: Philippines: Lawmakers, Activists Push To End US Military Pact

* informed in StopNATO*

http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3123026166
ADN Kronos International (Italy)
March 18, 2009
Philippines: Campaigners push to end military pact with US

Manila - Lawmakers and activists who oppose the Philippines' controversial military pact with the United States that has allowed a US marine convicted of rape to avoid jail pending an appeal have vowed to continue their drive to scrap the treaty.
....
The rape has become the rallying cry for a wide coalition of left-wing organisations in the Philippines, as well as former and current lawmakers, opposed to the Visiting Forces Agreement.

The VFA allows US soldiers to be stationed in the Philippines for military training, but does not fully clarify who is responsible if they commit a crime.

Smith is currently in the custody of the US Embassy in Manila, although a Supreme Court ordered last month to transfer him to a Filipino jail. The two countries are negotiating a new agreement.

Former Senate President Jovito Salonga and academic Harry Roque, two of the leaders of the anti-VFA movement, said that they do not resent Nicole for entering into an out-of-court settlement, but that this will not affect their anti-VFA petition.

"We filed our petition separate and distinct from Nicole in our capacity as citizens suing to impugn an agreement that violates our constitution", they said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Philippine Constitution does not allow other countries to have long-term military bases in the country, and the last US bases there closed in the early 1990s.

Current senators Francis Escudero and Rodolfo Biazon have also stated that the controversy over the VFA goes beyond Nicole's case, and attorney Neri Culminares, secretary general of the National Union of People's Lawyers, has announced that his group will soon stage a protest outside the US Embassy in Manila.
....
===========================
Stop NATO

Text Fwd: VFA unity statement and launching invite

* Forwad by Roland Simbulan, Agatha Haun *

[nousbases-info] Fwd: VFA unity statement and launching invite

Stand for sovereignty. Junk the VFA!

Our country is once again at a crossroads. We are compelled to choose
between rightfully asserting national sovereignty or surrendering it once
more in the name of so-called "special relations."

The continuing detention of convicted rapist Lance Corporal Daniel Smith at
the US embassy in Manila is clear proof of the grossly unequal character of
the Visiting Forces Agreement or VFA. And despite the Philippine Supreme
Court ruling declaring the Romulo-Kenney Agreement illegal and that Smith
should be returned to the custody of Philippine authorities, the Arroyo
government has not sought to regain custody of Smith. Instead, the Arroyo
government continues to insist that Smith should remain in the US embassy
until the highest court finally decides on his appeal. There is also every
indication that the US will not surrender Smith to Philippine authorities at
all.

The Smith case is only the most recent example of how grossly lopsided the
VFA is in favor of the US. The VFA also falls short of the Philippine
constitutional requirements for a valid treaty. It was ratified by the
Philippine Senate but not by the US Senate and was merely recognized as a
treaty by the US State Department.

While the Philippine government enforces the VFA in the country, it is not
so in the US. With the recent US Supreme Court ruling in Medellin vs. Texas,
treaties entered into by the US are deemed unenforceable in the US unless
there is an implementing law or if the treaty is self-executory. The RP-US
VFA falls short of these requirements set by the US Supreme Court.

With the unequal standards in the ratification and implementation of the
agreement, no less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
Philippines in his dissenting opinion has called the VFA unconstitutional
and a "slur on our sovereignty".

The complimentary agreement VFA 2 further underscores the gross inequality
and double-standards applied to US and Filipino troops. Filipino soldiers
who are accused or convicted of crimes in the US will not have the same
privileges that Daniel Smith enjoys today.VFA 2 highlights the utter absence
of mutuality and reciprocity in the agreements.

Apart from being unconstitutional on its face, the VFA is also
unconstitutional in its application. It allows the entry of an unlimited
number of foreign troops for an indefinite period of time sans any basing
treaty. Since 2002, US troops have been stationed in the Philippines under
various pretexts and engaged in various questionable military operations.

For being patently unequal, unconstitutional and an affront to our national
sovereignty, the VFA must be abrogated. The Executive branch, through
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, should exercise the right to terminate
the agreement. With the abrogation of the VFA, the Arroyo government will
have no other recourse but to impose Philippine laws and regain custody over
Daniel Smith.

Our choice is simple and clear. We must choose sovereignty over supposed
benefits from the VFA. We must choose national dignity over so-called
"special relations" with the United States. The Philippines must conduct
its foreign relations based on mutual respect, mutual benefit and
non-intervention in each country’s internal affairs.

Junk the VFA now!