August is commemorated in the Philippines as International Humanitarian Law (IHL) month. Yet some of the most horrific violations of IHL have occurred in the month of August.
On August 19, 2022, Benito Tiamzon, a member of the National Democratic Front (NDFP) negotiating panel, and Wilma Austria-Tiamzon, an NDFP consultant, were intercepted in Catbalogan, Samar with eight companions aboard a vehicle, tortured and killed and their bodies sent adrift on a boat loaded with explosives that was later detonated at sea. The military claimed that the victims died in a mid-sea encounter.
On August 20, 2021, poet turned New People’s Army (NPA) guerrilla Kerima Tariman was wounded and killed in firefight with the 79th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army in Silay City, Negros Occidental. Witnesses said she was not fatally wounded and was captured alive, but summarily killed by the soldiers.
More recently, on August 18, 2024 in Lambunao, Iloilo, the Marcos Jr. regime’s state-run media gloated that three alleged ranking members of the NDFP were reportedly killed by units of the 3rd Infantry Division of the Philippine Army in a gunbattle on August 16. The three were identified as Concha Araneta, Vivian Torrato and Vicente Hinojales. Yet the bodies of the deceased have not been turned over to their families, despite pleas from the latter and reports that the remains are already in advanced stages of decomposition.
Inordinately delaying the turnover of the remains of war casualties, be they combatants or civilians, is a violation of IHL, including the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Law (CARHRIHL) which was duly signed by the NDFP and the Philippine government in 1998.
This unexplainable delay moreover fuels suspicions of other violations such as torture, evidence of which had already been observed in the remains of six NPA members who died in an alleged gunbattle in Calinog, Iloilo on August 8, 2024. The deceased bore injuries such as large and small punctures in the chest, fractured arms and extensive bruising from head to toe, which are inconsistent with what might be sustained in a firefight. The families of these slain NPA members also had to wait for days before receiving their loved ones’ remains and were harassed by heavily armed soldiers, who at one point, even entered the funeral home where the relatives were holding a wake.
That these horrific killings and desecration of the remains of hors de combat were all committed at a time when state security forces pay feigned homage to International Humanitarian Law is a testament to the their rank hypocrisy. Under IHL, hors de combat, or combatants who are no longer able to participate in hostilities because they are ill, wounded, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, have surrendered or been captured should not be harmed or killed, and their rights respected as prisoners of war.
Violations of IHL are rampant in the course of the Marcos Jr. regime’s counter-insurgency war despite the fact that the Philippine government has signed and ratified more treaties on IHL than any other country in Southeast Asia and in spite of it having ratified a law, Republic Act No. 9851, that punishes violators of IHL. Violators are not only shielded but emboldened by the prevailing culture of impunity. Under the Marcos Jr. regime, atrocities committed by State security forces are, in fact, escalating as the regime chases its deadline of crushing the NPA by the end of the year.
Apart from violating the rights of hors de combat, the Marcos regime has also been intensifying bombings and artillery strikes against civilian communities and killing civilians on the pretext that they are armed combatants, all in violation of crucial IHL provisions that protect civilian lives, property and infrastructure.
We in KARAPATAN and the human rights community here and abroad reaffirm our commitment to waging a vigorous campaign to expose and oppose the grave violations of International Humanitarian Law in the country, put a stop to the atrocities being committed by Marcos’ state security forces against hors de combat and civilians alike, attain justice for the victims and exact accountability from the perpetrators. (PR)
