Army to help probe threats vs activists

ILOILO CITY—The Philippine Army will help investigate death threats against activists on Panay Island.

“We assured them that we are not responsible for these threats and we want to investigate who is responsible,” Maj. Gen. Emmanuel Bautista, commander of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division (3ID), told reporters here on Wednesday after a dialogue with leaders of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) and other militant groups at the provincial capitol.

The dialogue, facilitated by Gov. Arthur Defensor, was held after the militants condemned the threats, especially that received by postal mail by Ma. Geobelyn Lopez, secretary general of the Madi-as Ecological Movement (MEM) which is opposing mining on Panay and Guimaras islands.

The letter, signed by Alvin M. Salvador, warned Lopez that something bad might happen to her family if she continued to work with communist rebels.

She could end up like Ma. Luisa Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado, two Iloilo activists who remain missing after they were waylaid and abducted on

April 12, 2007, by unidentified armed men, it said.

Bautista said the military welcomed the dialogue so they could thresh out issues with the activists.

Hope Hervilla, chair of Bayan-Panay, said that while the group appreciated the statement of the military officials on the death threats, the government’s counterinsurgency program had consistently targeted legal and unarmed activists.

Hervilla cited a 2007 report of Prof. Phillip Alston, special rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which stated that the killings of activists in the Philippines was a result of the deliberate targeting of activists as part of the government’s operations against communist rebels.

The charge has been repeatedly denied by military officials.