Tag: philippines

U.S. Helicopters Used to Kill Civilians in Philippines, Locals Say

Black Hawk and ATAK helicopters swooped overhead and began firing into the mountains on an early February afternoon. Farmers tilling crops and tending their water buffalo ran for cover, taking shelter as the helicopters strafed the area. In a nearby town square, onlookers recorded with their phones, gasping as explosions ripped across the horizon. A Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter later made rounds in the area, witnesses said, as soldiers sequestered farmers in shelters. They were kept from their farms for weeks as their harvest wilted and died.

It’s a scene that has become a monthly occurrence in the rural Philippines, beginning in early 2023 and continuing today. The military said it was pursuing rebels from the communist New People’s Army (NPA), a designated terrorist group active since 1969, when Jose Maria Sison founded the New People’s Army—a Maoist group waging an armed rebellion primarily based in rural areas. The military and NPA have been in conflict ever since, despite several rounds of failed peace talks, most recently in 2023.

But since 2023, the Philippine military has started using advanced attack helicopters and fighter jets supplied wholly, or in part, by the United States, in a rapid escalation of counterinsurgency operations that have tormented rural communities and led to numerous potential international humanitarian law violations that could trigger policies preventing U.S. military aid, according to dozens of witnesses and experts who spoke to Drop Site News.

Washington says it is arming its ally to defend against Chinese aggression, but the U.S.-manufactured helicopters have so far been used solely on domestic targets.

The NPA’s numbers have dwindled: the military says it has about 1,500 members, although the NPA claims to have far more. The counterinsurgency continues to act as a cover for military and government officials to quash local resistance to infrastructure projects, according to scores of allegations by local and international human rights groups.

Filipino state officials are frequently accused of “red-tagging,” or falsely labeling activists and political opponents as communist rebels. Several “red-tagged” activists have been killed in suspicious circumstances and with no investigations into their deaths, such as Zara Alvarez, a legal worker who was shot dead in a crowded public square in 2020. Others have been kidnapped, such as youth activists Jolina Castro and Jhed Tamano, who disappeared in 2023 before resurfacing and accusing the military of forcing them to falsely surrender as communist rebels.

In March, an FA-50 jet crashed in the country’s southern mountains on an apparent counterinsurgency mission, killing both pilots. Days earlier, Black Hawk helicopters strafed Indigenous communities in the central island of Mindoro, according to the Manila-based human rights group Karapatan.

Karapatan has recorded at least 22 aerial bombings in the rural Philippines since February 2, 2023. That’s when the then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Manila and announced a milestone agreement for U.S. troops to use four additional military bases in the Philippines, strategically facing the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

On the same day, the Philippine military used helicopters purchased in U.S.-sanctioned arms transfers to launch airstrikes against insurgents in remote areas of northern Luzon, adjacent to three of the bases set to be used by the U.S. military, sending farmers in the rural municipality of Baggao fleeing from their fields.

The farmers ran to the town square of Birao, where they sheltered for several days. They were forbidden from accessing their farms for more than one month, causing them to lose an entire harvest. Each family was given about $85 as compensation by the regional social welfare bureau. “It wasn’t enough,” said Rosario Anban, a farmer. “We couldn’t get to our crops because we were scared.”

The military used white phosphorus during its aerial operations in Baggao, according to rights groups, although it was seemingly far from civilian areas. The next month, the military dropped white phosphorus about a football field’s distance away from Gawaan Elementary School, according to multiple Gawaan residents who spoke to Drop Site.

The mostly Indigenous residents of Gawaan, a remote mountain town accessible only by a dirt motorcycle path, were not used to conflict. They rely on farming, loading vegetables onto jeepneys and selling them at market. In recent years, they have protested a planned dam project that would inundate the nearby Saltan River, flooding part of the valley where they live and farm.

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Smartmatic Indicted For Money Laundering, Bribery Of Philippine Official

Smartmatic — the company involved in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News over the latter’s reporting on the 2020 election — was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami on Thursday for allegedly bribing a Philippine official in relation to the 2016 Philippine national elections.

The indictment added the parent company of Smartmatic, SGO Corporation Ltd., as a defendant in the case already underway against three Smartmatic executives. The indictment charges that between 2015 and 2018, Smartmatic executives Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez, Jorge Miguel Vasquez, and others “caused at least $1 million in bribes to be paid” to the former chairman of COMELEC, according to the Department of Justice.

COMELEC stands for the Commission on Elections of the Republic of the Philippines. According to the indictment, COMELEC is an “independent agency mandated to enforce and administer election laws in the Philippines.”

According to the indictment, COMELEC opened the bidding process in 2014 for the lease of 23,000 election machines for the upcoming 2016 election. Smartmatic was awarded a contract in 2015. In 2015, COMELEC awarded a second contract to Smartmatic for the leasing of 70,977 voting machines and services for the 2016 election. Smartmatic was later awarded a third contract.

The indictment alleges that Smartmatic, along with its executives, offered to pay bribes to the COMELEC chairman in order to obtain the contracts, as well as to obtain the “release of favorable value added tax payments.”

In order to pay for the alleged bribes, the indicted co-conspirators allegedly over-invoiced the cost of each voting machine that was used in the 2016 Philippine elections. According to the Department of Justice, “they used coded language, created fraudulent contracts and sham loan agreements, and routed transactions through bank accounts in Asia, Europe, and the U.S., including within the Southern District of Florida.”

The indictment charges Smartmatic, along with Piñate and Vasquez, with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as well as one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and three counts of international laundering of monetary instruments.

Smartmatic denied the allegations in a statement to The Federalist.

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Former Philippines president charged with ‘crimes against humanity’

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte with “crimes against humanity.” The prosecutors have alleged that his ruthless war on drugs resulted in at least 76 killings, and have claimed that the real death toll is much greater.

The redacted 15-page charge sheet, dated July 4 but released only on Monday, alleges Duterte is responsible for murder during his time as Davao City mayor and as president, including 19 killings from 2013–2016, 14 “high-value target” deaths in 2016–2017, and 43 killings during broader “clearance” operations through 2018. Prosecutors say thousands more were killed in the operations.

The ICC, however, has faced international criticism and accusations of bias over perceived failures to address atrocities committed by Western countries. The United States, China, and Russia are not members, and the court has often struggled to enforce arrest warrants because it relies on state cooperation.

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US To Fund and Build a Fast Boat Base for the Philippines on the South China Sea

The US will fund and construct a base for fast boats for the Philippine military on the South China Sea amid heightened tensions between Manila and Beijing over disputed rocks and reefs in the area.

The base will be built on the west coast of the Philippine island province of Palawan and is expected to be completed by the first quarter of the 2026 fiscal year. According to USNI News, the base will house five boats, including both “assault boats” and rigid-hulled inflatable boats, which will be constructed by the US-based company ReconCraft.

The USNI report said that the base will be situated approximately 160 miles east of Second Thomas Shoal, a major source of tensions in the maritime dispute and the site of collisions and encounters between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Despite the distance, the Philippine military frequently deploys small boats to the disputed reefs, and the US project will give them a more effective way to do that.

It’s unclear how much the project will cost the US, but it’s the latest in a series of US-funded military construction projects in the Philippines. In 2023, Washington and Manila signed a deal to expand the US military presence in the country, and the US has also been increasing military aid to the Southeast Asian nation.

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What’s Really Going On In the South China Sea Between the Philippines and China

Maritime clashes between the Philippines and China had been mostly over the Philippines’ military outpost, BRP (BRP – Barko ng Republika ng Pilipinas, which translates to “Ship of the Republic of the Philippines” – the ship prefix for the Philippines) Sierra Madre, in the Spratly Islands, which is disputed by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan (a province of China, as recognized by the United Nations’ Resolution No. 2758), and Vietnam. The BRP Sierra Madre was intentionally run aground on a reef near the Second Thomas Shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands, in 1997, so that the Philippines could stake their territorial claim.

The WWII-era ship is rusted out and on its way to disintegrating.  In December 2023, the Philippines allocated funds to replace the ship with a permanent structure. Coincidentally, in September 2023, Blake Herzinger, a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre of the University of Sydney, penned an article titled, “It’s Time to Build Combined Forward Operating Base Sierra Madre.” This outpost would be “manned by combined rotational forces from both the Philippines and the U.S. Marine Corps,” according to Herzinger.  In it, he admits that doing so, “would be a provocative move, and it would not be without significant risk.”

In October 2023, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFU) admitted that their resupply missions to the BRP Sierra Madre were carrying materials that were used in the maintenance and repair of the ship. China had been accusing the Philippines of using its resupply missions to send “illegal building materials” to reinforce the dilapidated ship on several occasions.  In June of this year, The Financial Times revealed that the Philippines had “secretly” reinforced the BRP Sierra Madre at the Second Thomas Shoal.

On March 5, 2024, in response to an incident at the Second Thomas Shoal, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller stated that “Article IV of the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including those of its coast guard, anywhere in the South China Sea.”  At the time, the crash was “not the time or reason to invoke a Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States,” according to Philippine President Bongbong Marcos. Invoking the Mutual Defense Treaty by the Philippines could lead to an armed conflict between China and the U.S. Military.

Recently, these clashes have been occurring at the Sabina Shoal, another disputed atoll in the Spratly Islands. In May, the Philippines claimed that China was carrying out “small-scale reclamation” and anchored the BRP Teresa Magbanua at Sabina Shoal to “catch and document the dumping of crushed corals over the sandbars” (China denied this).  The Philippines had been using the BRP Teresa Magbanua as a staging area for their resupply missions to the BRP Sierra Madre at Second Thomas Shoal. A new Philippine Coast Guard vessel was sent to Sabina Shoal, according to Jonathan Malaya, the spokesperson for the National Security Council of the Philippines, on September 26. However, he declined to comment on the specifics of their intentions or plans, citing operational security concerns.

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Philippines police say ‘alarming details’ uncovered in new allegations against celebrity preacher

Police in the Philippines said on Wednesday more people had come forward alleging sexual abuse by celebrity pastor Apollo Quiboloy, pointing to what they called an alarming pattern of crimes by the wealthy, self-proclaimed “Appointed Son of God”.

Quiboloy, who is facing a raft of charges in the Philippines and the United States including sex trafficking, money laundering and child abuse, was arrested on Sunday after a weeks-long search of his church’s sprawling 30-hectare (74-acre) compound by more than 2,000 security personnel.

Quiboloy for years cultivated an image as a charismatic spiritual leader with divine powers, earning him millions of followers, a lavish lifestyle and powerful friends in the country’s political elite.

“These courageous victims have spoken up, revealing their harrowing experiences. The abuse they endured shows an alarming pattern of manipulation and exploitation,” Philippine police chief General Francisco Marbil said in a statement.

Those included girls as young as 12 and were part of a group of what police called “inner-circle pastorals” who have been crucial in uncovering the full extent of Quiboloy’s alleged crimes, Marbil added.

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The Japanese-Philippine Military Logistics Pact Raises The Risk Of War With China

It’s no secret that the US is preparing to “Pivot (back) to Asia” in order to more muscularly contain China, but few have paid attention to the form in which this is expected to take in the coming future. Instead of the US doing so on its own or through the previously assembled Quad of itself, Australia, India, and Japan, it’s increasingly relying on the Squad. This framework swaps India out for the Philippines, and its latest relevant development was the clinching of a Japanese-Philippine military logistics pact.

That agreement follows April’s first-ever trilateral US-Japanese-Philippine summit, which tightened the US’ containment noose around China, and came approximately nine months after those three’s National Security Advisors met for the first time ever in June 2023. In practice, Japan will likely ramp up its military exercises with the Philippines and explore more arms deals, with those two possibly also roping Taiwan into their activities to an uncertain extent in the future given that it’s roughly equidistant between them.

This will increase the chances of a conflict by miscalculation since China has already recently shown that it has the political will to respond to violations of the maritime territory that it claims as its own as proven by its latest low-intensify clashes with the Philippines. Even though the US has mutual defense obligations to the Philippines and has recently reminded China of them, it’s been reluctant to meaningfully act on its commitments for de-escalation reasons, but that could easily change.

After all, the US would be pressured to respond if China clashes with both its Japanese and Philippine allies in the event that they jointly violate the maritime territory that Beijing claims as its own, though they might of course abstain from such a provocation for the time being for whatever reason. In any case, it can’t be ruled out that something of the sort might eventually transpire, which could prompt a dangerous brinksmanship crisis that risks spiraling out of control if cooler heads on all sides don’t prevail.

Southeast Asia isn’t the only battleground in the Sino-US dimension of the New Cold War since Northeast Asia is rapidly shaping up to be a complementary one as well. North Korea recently accused the US, South Korea, and Japan of conspiring to create an “Asian NATO” after their latest trilateral drills. South Korea is a prime candidate for joining the Squad, which can also be described as AUKUS+, with Japan playing the senior partner role in that scenario exactly as it now plays with the Philippines.

That likely won’t happen anytime soon though since the South Koreans remain resentful of Japan’s World War II-era occupation that Tokyo hasn’t ever taken full responsibility for in their view. Trilateral drills under America’s aegis are one thing, but entering into a military-logistics pact with their former colonizer is an altogether different matter, especially if it leads to the latter gaining the upper hand. Nevertheless, South Korea is expected to scale up its role in AUKUS+, with Japan as its top Asian partner.

The grand strategic trend is that the US is forming two Asian trilaterals with itself and Japan that are centered on the Philippines in Southeast Asia and South Korea in Northeast Asia.

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Pacific on the Edge of War as Chinese Naval Forces Board and Seize Military Boats of Philippine Navy

The Pacific appears increasingly nearer to war as Chinese vessels encircled and boarded military resupply boats belonging to a key American ally.

Tensions erupted as the Chinese Coast Guard seized ships of a Philippine Navy resupply mission that was underway near the Second Thomas Shoal. The Armed Forces of the Philippines revealed pictures of the Monday confrontation in a social media post, calling the attack “coercive, aggressive, and barbaric.”

The shallow reef, also known as Ayungin Shoal, is part of the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands, one of the many areas in the region claimed by Beijing.

The Philippine military was resupplying a tank landing ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, which was intentionally run aground on a reef just off the disputed shoal in 1999 to bolster the country’s claim on the island.

Although likely not even remotely seaworthy at this point, the Sierra Madre remains an actively crewed commissioned vessel of the Philippine Navy.

China has similarly fortified its claims on the area, deploying missiles to some of the islands in 2018.

Videos show the resupply mission turning to blows as China became involved. In one clip, Chinese sailors could be seen waving and swinging axes, machetes and other melee weapons as the boats closed in to become a chaotic mass.

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Logic of a Forgotten American Atrocity Is Alive Today

In March 1906, U.S. forces attacked a group of Moros and killed more than 900 men, women, and children at the top of Mt. Dajo on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines.

Even though the death toll was higher than at well-known massacres committed by American soldiers at Wounded Knee and My Lai, the massacre at Bud Dajo has been all but forgotten outside the Philippines.

Recovering the history of this event is the subject of an important new book by historian Kim Wagner, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History. The book is a masterful reconstruction of the events leading up to the lopsided slaughter on the mountain, and Wagner sets the massacre in its proper historical context during the age of American overseas colonialism at the start of the 20th century. It also offers important lessons about how the dehumanization of other people leads to terrible atrocities and how imperial policies rely on the use of brutal violence.

In the years leading up to the massacre, the U.S. had been extending its control over the southern Philippines after it had annexed the northern islands and defeated local pro-independence forces in the Philippine-American War (1899-1902). U.S. relations with the Sultanate of Sulu were initially regulated by the Bates Treaty of 1899, but within a few years the U.S. abrogated that treaty and sought to impose direct rule. The U.S. tossed the treaty aside on the recommendation of Gen. Leonard Wood, who was the local military governor based on Mindanao at the time.

The massacre was part of a larger history of violent American expansionism, and it was the result of an imperial policy that sought to impose colonial rule on the Philippines. The U.S. effort to collect the cedula tax provoked significant resentment and opposition among the Moros. (The Moro name was the one given to the Muslim Tausugs of the Sulu archipelago by the earlier Spanish colonizers, and it was the one that the Americans continued to use.)

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Greenpeace Crusade Will Blind and Kill Children

Greenpeace and other anti-biotech activist groups have logged a win in a crusade that could ultimately blind and kill thousands of children annually. How? By persuading the Court of Appeals of the Philippines to issue a scientifically ignorant and morally hideous decision to ban the planting of vitamin A–enriched golden rice. The objective result will be more children blinded and killed by vitamin A deficiency.

The World Health Organization estimates that 250,000–500,000 children who are vitamin A–deficient become blind every year, and half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight. In addition, children with immune systems weakened by vitamin A deficiency have an increased risk of illness and death from infectious diseases.

The court also banned the planting of an eggplant variety that has been biotech-enhanced to resist insect pests. The same variety approved by Bangladeshi regulators has reduced pesticide usage and improved farmers’ yields by more than 50 percent.

In their press release, Greenpeace activists crowed, “The Court of Appeals has essentially put a moratorium on these genetically modified crops.”

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