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CBCP: Arroyo action on killings ‘unsatisfactory’


Catholic bishops scored the government, the military and even the communist New People’s Army (NPA) Sunday for the unabated extra-judicial killings in the countryside. In a pastoral statement, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said the killing of unarmed folk and farmers show utter disregard for basic rights and justice. “This disregard is horrendously displayed in the recent extra-judicial killings perpetrated by groups from both the right and the left on farmers whose only crime is their continuing struggle for agrarian reform for their inability to pay the revolutionary tax demanded of them by the NPA…," it said in a statement read by Cagayan de Oro bishop Antonio Ledesma. “As a religious people and it does not matter whether we are Christians, Muslims or adherents of other religions, we must vehemently condemn the continuing murder of such rural folk. “We condemn too just as vehemently the unabated killing of unarmed men and women on the mere charge or suspicion that they support or belong to leftist political groups." CBCP said leaders had failed to “contribute not a little to the injustices and inequalities that have become deeply ingrained in our national life." “And today, the murders and killings, the corruption and deceiving, the crimes that are being committed daily with impunity against our poor. These we see are all rooted in the practical denial of the basic human dignity and right of our very poor," it added. Also, the CBCP called for the “serious" implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), whose 10-year extension is due to end in 2008. Ledesma criticized in particular the government and military’s response to the “shameful" killings of unarmed crusaders for justice and equality. He said the response, which included the creation of a fact-finding body headed by former Supreme Court justice Jose Melo, was “most unsatisfactory." The CBCP also found the government’s protestations of concern “not too convincing," and called on the faithful to demand that the government do its job as protectors of the peace. “The government and military’s response to the shameful extra-judicial killings of unarmed crusaders for justice and equality is most unsatisfactory, their protestations of concern not too convincing. The greater and more effective performance of their duties as guardians and protectors of our peace, this too we must demand as strongly as we can," it said. Meanwhile, the CBCP called on government to complete the CARP, “defective as it is," by next year as it has been targeted. If it is not sufficiently implemented by then, the program “should be further extended and funded more seriously and generously," the CBCP said. “The one big effort of the government at alleviating rural poverty has been the ongoing land reform program, CARP. The law instituting it was passed years ago but its full implementation is still far off in the future, if ever. The law was defective in the first place, emasculated in the very beginning in a landlord-dominated Congress, further watered down in its implementation. At this stage, a year before the scheduled end of the program, there is much that has not yet been done and the general situation of our farmers is still as bleak as ever," it lamented. On the other hand, it pushed for the development of basic ecclesial community (BEC) type church community and organizations. Such communities should be fully participated communities. Problems, national or local, big or small, weighty or light, and the problem of the rural poor we are speaking of here now is probably our weightiest. All must be looked at and become community concerns for the solving of which their participation is needed, it said. The CBCP also called for another national rural congress similar to that in 1967. “It was at this congress the participants concluded the Church must go to the barrios, the heavy realization the rural parts of the country are most neglected by government development programs and church pastoral care," it said.- GMANews.TV

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