RAPE OF THE PHILIPPINES

Nicole, a Philippino from Zamboanga City, was a management accounting graduate.

Nicole alleged that, in Subic, just before midnight of 1 November 2005, Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, an American marine, raped her inside a moving van.

Nicole alleged that Smith's companions, Lance Corporals Keith Silkwood and Dominic Duplantis and Staff Sergeant Chad Carpentier, were inside the van cheering Smith on as the incident happened.

The security guard of a bar reportedly saw Smith carrying Nicole to the van.

Several other people reportedly saw the Marines leaving a shocked and weeping Nicole at a pier.

NAVAL STATION, SUBIC BAY, LUZON PHILIPPINES

In his 2006 column 'Cry Rape,' Inquirer columnist Conrado De Quiros wrote (Nicole's Rape):

"The girl was plied with drink and God knows what else in a bar, shoved into a van, and raped inside by an American serviceman while his four buddies egged him on with cries of 'F__k! F__k! F__k!'

"Later, she was lifted out of the van by her hands and feet by two men like a pig and deposited on the pavement. She had on only a shirt and a panty, a condom still sticking to her panty. Someone from the van threw a pair of pants in her direction, and the van drove off."

Nicole’s case "might have been like hundreds, if not thousands, of other cases of rape that had been reported in or around US military bases in the Philippines since 1946." (Nicole's Rape )

In the Philippines, in December 2006, a Philippines court convicted Lance-Corporal Daniel Smith of raping Nicole.

Marines in the Philippines


Smith was not detained in a Philippine prison, but in the American embassy compound, while he awaited the outcome of an appeal.

In March 2009, it was reported that Nicole had been given 100,000 pesos ($2,000) in damages by Smith and that she had gone to live in America with her American boyfriend.

Nicole dismissed her lawyer and made a statement that she was no longer sure that she had been raped.

On 23 April 2009, Smith was set free.

The Philippines The romance has gone.

The US likes to have a military presence in the Philippines. It claims that the Philippines faces a threat from terrorists (the CIA) and Communists (non-fascists) and Muslim separatists (allegedly armed by the CIA).


1. Gary Leupp, professor of history, wrote:

"The Philippines was a US colony from 1898 to 1946.

"One-tenth of the Filipino population was wiped out in the first US exercise in counter-insurgency in Asia.

"The US backed a series of vicious regimes after the Philippines' (alleged) independence, most notably that of Ferdinand Marcos." (Gary Leupp: Why This War Is Wrong)

2. The book 'Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines', by University of the Philippines professor Walden Bello, describes how:

"the World Bank, the CIA and other US agencies have systematically plundered the domestic economy of the Philippines for transnational corporate interests, privatization, and deregulation -

"and how the 'Asian market crisis' of the late 1990s was the direct result of such programs.'"

3. Herbert Docena, at Asia Times, 28 February 2008, has written about the growing US military presence in the Philippines:




US prowls for China in the Philippines

"The United States has been deploying a growing number of its troops, ships and equipment all over the Philippines ostensibly for training exercises, humanitarian and engineering projects, and other missions. In 2006 alone, up to 37 military exercises were scheduled - up from around 24 in the preceding years. As many as 6,000 US troops are involved, depending on the exercise...

"Along with troops, an increasing number of ships have also been entering the country's territorial waters and docking at various ports with growing frequency...

"The US has also been constructing an increasing number of structures and facilities that could be useful for the US military when the contingency arises - while at the same time allowing it to buy political support from the national and local governments...

"In November 2002, the US and Philippine governments signed the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA), which researchers with the US Congressional Research Service describe as 'allowing the United States to use the Philippines as a supply base for military operations throughout the region'...

"Since 2002, a unit now called the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTFP) has been deployed to the southern Philippines ... for the last six years...

"Most recently, US troops have been accused of joining Filipino soldiers when they perpetrated what was described as a massacre of innocent civilians in Sulu.

"In terms of profile and mission, the JSOTF-P is similar to the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-Horn of Africa) - which was established in Djibouti in eastern Africa in 2003, also composed mostly of Special Forces, and which has been described as the 'model for future US military operations'...

"The US military presence in the Philippines appears to be part of the US drive toward global military dominance in general, and, in particular, of the emerging US strategy towards China...

"Indonesia and Malaysia, on the other hand, have not only openly castigated US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have also rejected US demands to station in and operate from their countries.

"Even Thailand, which is a close US ally, has actually rejected US overtures to be allowed to station ships in or to deploy troops to its territory.

"Regardless of their attitudes toward the United States, most countries in the region simply do not see China as a threat and have therefore refused to go along any strategy that could antagonize it."





In the Philippines there continue to be assasinations and disappearances of those who oppose the right-wing, pro-Pentagon government.

In 2004, 63 were killed.

In 2005, 179 were assassinated and another 46 disappeared and presumed dead.

So far in the first two months of 2006 there have been 26 documented political assassinations....

Ramsey Clark investigated death squads.

Clark wrote that "the victims of vigilante violence are overwhelmingly poor farmers, workers, slum dwellers, and others who are pushing for significant land reform, wage increases and protection workers' rights, as well as those who oppose U.S. military bases."

The increase in death squad activities in the Philippines comes at the same time as increased CIA aid and was preceded by a visit to the Philippines by Maj. Gen. John Singlaub. (The Nation, 9/19/1987)

The following are extracts from an article in the May 19, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=76244&col=57

THE MURDER last week of Manuel Nardo... brought to 123 the number of leftist activists killed since 2001...

The Left blamed the killings on government security forces...

The killings have escalated against the background of heightened harassment of the parliamentary stream of the Left.

~

It is alleged that US tax dollars are being used to fund death squads in the Philippines.

According to a news release from Bayan:
http://qc.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/7216.php

An Arroyo-Bush military pact sealed in 2001 has secured millions in US military aid to the Arroyo dictatorship, the largest recipient of US aid in the Asia-Pacific region.

There are currently thousands of US military in the Philippines training Philippine forces in suppression tactics that include large-scale political persecution, under the auspices of so-called anti-terrorism measures.

~~~

From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032006D.shtml

Since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo joined the US global "War on Terrorism", the Philippines has become the site of an on-going undeclared war against peasant and union activists, progressive political dissidents and lawmakers, human rights lawyers and activists, women leaders and a wide range of print and broadcast journalists.

Because of the links between the Army, the regime and the death squads, political assassinations take place in an atmosphere of absolute impunity.

The vast majority of the attacks occur in the countryside and provincial towns...

Between 2001 and 2006 hundreds of killings, disappearances, death threats and cases of torture have been documented by the independent human rights center, KARAPATAN , and the church-linked Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research. Since Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001 there have been 400 documented extrajudicial killings.

In 2004, 63 were killed and in 2005, 179 were assassinated and another 46 disappeared and presumed dead. So far in the first two months of 2006 there have been 26 documented political assassinations....

In the years following the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship (Feb. 26, 1986) by a military and Church-backed revolt, the subsequent elected presidents have failed to stem the ongoing deterioration of the country.

The new rulers like Corazon Aquino (1986-1992), and former General Fidel Ramos (1992-1998), simply favored a new set of oligarchs and set the stage for the rise to power of a corrupt populist, Joseph Estrada.

His "anti-oligarch" rhetoric brought him to the presidential palace in 1998 with widespread support among the poor.

Estrada became an irritant to Washington and the traditional oligarchy by welcoming Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 1999 and for his populist social policies, such as handing out thousands of land titles to urban squatters.

US-designed, upper class-backed, street demonstrations supported by sectors of the military elite culminated in the ouster of Estrada in January 2001. The same forces hoisted his Vice President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the Presidency. Macapagal is a US educated, neo-liberal economist and favorite of the US Embassy.

This political putsch led to the expansion of US military basing rights and a new military agreement, quickly signed by Macapagal after a two year delay during Estrada's presidency. With the rise of Macapagal-Arroyo, Washington has a reliable client.

The newly 'installed' Macapagal Arroyo quickly instituted a neo-liberal program of privatizations, drastic cuts for public education and public hospitals and onerous value-added taxes which impacted the poor and lower middle-class.

By 2005, the Philippine total external and internal debt ballooned to over $100 billion dollars and yearly debt servicing exceed 30 per cent of the budget.

Even 8 million overseas Filipino workers (including a significant section of the educated professionals) sending home $12.5 billion dollars of remittances in 2005 could not begin to cover debt servicing.

The Philippines bears the dubious distinction of being the only country in Asia to have seen a drop in per capita GDP during and since the heady years of the 'Asian Tiger' boom.

Macapagal Arroyo's family and cronies have been implicated in the same levels of corruption as that attributed to the deposed President Estrada...

~~

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin080802/chin080802.html

www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/20/feature3.shtml

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin071702/chin071702.html

Oil and gas in the South China Sea

Drugs and the Philippines

The US Military and the CIA in the Philippines

The Abu Sayyaf


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