By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: April 26, 2007

DAVAO CITY, Philippines: By most accounts here, 9-year-old Grecil Buya was a bright and playful girl who often missed class because she liked to catch spiders.

She lived in a shack with her parents and three siblings, peasants in the province of Compostela Valley, the hotbed of the Communist insurgency in this part of the southern Philippines.

As far as the army is concerned, however, she was a child soldier who, on the morning of March 31, aimed an ArmaLite assault rifle at soldiers battling Communist guerrillas a few meters from her house. Moments later, Grecil lay dead on the ground, shot through the head.

Grecil’s death and the circumstances that surround it have outraged human rights advocates, who say it is just the latest example of the army’s disregard for children who have been drawn into the line of fire in its campaign against the Communist insurgency.

“How could such a small girl carry and fire an ArmaLite?” asked Pacita Buya, Grecil’s mother. “She was not a rebel. She was my little girl.”

The army insists, however, that the rebels do indeed enlist children, both because they are easy to manipulate and because, as minors, they are immune from prosecution.

What is not disputed is that the continuing conflict is taking its toll on children. According to the Salinlahi Foundation, a Philippine nongovernment group that advocates children’s rights, 54 children have been killed in military operations against the Communists since 2001.

Buya and her husband, Gregorio Galacio, went to Manila last week to press charges against the army and help publicize their daughter’s death. The Commission on Human Rights, an independent government-created body, is investigating the case.

Grecil’s death came as the government has come under criticism, here and abroad, for its human rights record. According to Karapatan, a Filipino rights group, nearly a thousand journalists, rights advocates, union leaders and suspected leftists have been killed since 2001 as part of the government’s renewed counterinsurgency effort. Last week, three journalists were attacked near Manila by unknown gunmen, one fatally, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.

These killings - as well as the sense, articulated last weekend in a speech by the Supreme Court chief justice, Reynato Puno, that the government has been running roughshod over civil liberties as it pursues its anti-insurgency and anti-terrorism campaign - have become key issues in the midterm elections scheduled for May.

“Grecil’s death merely underscores the fact that human rights and civil liberties have become casualties in this regime,” said Kelly Delgado, secretary general of Karapatan in this city. “It’s a confirmation of the sense many Filipinos feel that the military has not changed its ways, that it remains brutal.”

Children are clearly among the victims of the fighting, even if the circumstances of their deaths are debated.

The 7,000-strong New People’s Army, which has been waging a Maoist insurgency for more than three decades, denies that it enlists children and insists that it only recruits people who are 18 and older.

The rebels operate largely in the countryside and get support from the residents of rural villages.

Most of the rebels are in fact former farmers from these same villages, or former students from cities in the region. The rebels often seek shelter in the villages, where they interact with residents.

According to the preliminary findings on Grecil’s death by the Commission on Human Rights, the rebels had sought shelter at her home, and it was there that the soldiers found them.

The army insists, however, that Grecil was a minor who had been recruited by the Maoists.

“They are still actively exploiting children, ages from 12 to 17, by using them as child soldiers,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Torres Jr., an army spokesman. From last September to March, he said, the army has documented 32 such cases.

Torres said the rebels were taking advantage of a Filipino law that bars the prosecution of children aged 15 and below.

“The New People’s Army is recruiting minors because they are having difficulty recruiting adults,” he said. “They prefer these children because of their innocence and vulnerability to manipulation.”

Human Rights Watch, a nongovernmental group based in New York, has documented reports from Filipino soldiers who said that in encounters with rebels they have captured children as young as 13.

The army cites Grecil as proof of the continuing recruitment of children. Two days after the girl’s death, the army told reporters that she and her father were guerrillas. Soldiers say that Grecil fired directly at them, according to a statement released by the army. They say they first thought she was a boy of about 12. A soldier was also killed in the encounter that left Grecil dead.

Grecil’s father has denied involvement with the rebels, saying he is only a maker of coconut wine.

The army released a photograph of the dead girl alongside the rifle. That the weapon and the girl were almost the same height set off a barrage of questions from Grecil’s family and friends, and from human rights advocates. Among their chief questions was how she could have carried a rifle nearly as tall as herself and been able to fire it.

Grecil’s relatives, friends, classmates and neighbors, even village officials, insist that she was only a student who loved watching noontime television and who last month finished the second grade with honors.

“I can testify that Grecil was not a member of the New People’s Army,” Eulogio Almasa, leader of the village where the girl lived, said. “Why? Because I was her godfather during her christening. The child went to school every day.”

Human rights groups and child advocates have urged the army to be more careful in its operations because the Communist insurgents operate in villages like Grecil’s.

The Salinlahi Foundation, in a report released last week, described other abuses that it said minors had suffered during army operations.

Last year, two high school students, ages 14 and 15, were shot by soldiers in a province in the north and accused of being guerrillas, the foundation said.

Also last year, three 15-year-olds were gathering coconuts in Quezon Province, in the southern Philippines, when soldiers came upon them. “They were tortured to force them to admit that they were members of the NPA,” the foundation said in its report, referring to the New People’s Army. “They were also charged with rebellion.”

The army insists that the minors in both instances were rebels.

“We cannot help but conclude that these acts are intentional and systematic, rather than isolated,” the foundation said in its report. It said the acts were consistent with a new government counterinsurgency policy that seeks to intimidate civilians from giving support to insurgent groups.

The government has consistently denied those charges, saying its forces do not target noncombatants.