Philippines ‘Bracing for the Worst’ in Drought

By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: February 19, 2010

MANILA — A drought in the Philippines caused by the El Niño weather phenomenon has destroyed millions of dollars worth of crops, reduced the country’s water supply and is threatening widespread blackouts as power companies contend with low water levels in hydroelectric dams, officials said Friday.

“It is such a difficult situation because we have just survived the typhoons in October that destroyed 1.5 million metric tons of rice and countless basic infrastructure,” Joel Rudinas, an undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, said in an interview Friday. “We are bracing for the worst.”

At a press briefing on Friday at the presidential palace, Charito Planas, a spokeswoman for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, asked Filipinos to use buckets to recycle bathwater for additional purposes, such as flushing toilets.

El Niño’s damage to crops is now estimated at more than $61 million, and Mr. Rudinas said the Philippines, already the world’s largest importer of rice, has imported an additional 2.2 million metric tons because of the drought.

Nearly 400,000 acres of farmland have already been affected , and agriculture officials expect the drought to continue, perhaps until July. Growth in agriculture, targeted at 5 percent for this year, is certain to drop, according to Mr. Rudinas, who said, “The first half of the year will definitely be a downtrend.”

Mrs. Arroyo said on Tuesday that she was concerned about the fall in farmers’ income but assured Filipinos that the food supply will not suffer.

The government has begun cloud-seeding operations in hard-hit areas, particularly in the northern part of the country, and has allotted some $20 million in aid to the farm and fishing sectors in at least 14 of the country’s 80 provinces.

Two weeks ago, Mrs. Arroyo signed an order that effectively ordered the rationing of water to utility companies “to maximize the limited supply of water.” Other government measures include the drilling of more water wells and the purchase of thousands of irrigation pumps.

Some parts of the country, particularly the southern region of Mindanao, are almost certain to experience power cuts.

“There is not enough power coming from the hydro plants so we have a deficiency or shortage of power in May,” Carlito Claudio, an official with the National Grid Corp., told a House energy committee hearing this week. National Grid, a private consortium, manages most of the nation’s power transmission lines. He said hydroelectric plants on the southern island of Mindanao have almost no water reserves.

Mr. Claudio said he expects two- to three-hour blackouts every day, possibly until the national elections in May, a comment that prompted election watchdogs to urge the Commission on Elections to establish safeguards to prevent fraud. In previous elections, blackouts have often occurred while votes were being counted.

At least one lawmaker has suggested that Congress give Mrs. Arroyo emergency powers to deal with the crisis, including the authority to tap private power generators to supply additional electricity to the National Power Corp., the government-owned firm that generates much of the country’s electricity.

The Philippines suffered a severe drought in 1999 and two milder dry spells in 2004 and 2007.

Military Brings 43 Alleged Rebels to Court in Manila

Philippine Army accuses health care workers of being Communist rebels

By Carlos H. Conde
The New York Times
Published: Feb. 15

MANILA — The Philippine military, stung by new criticisms over alleged human rights abuses, brought to court Monday the 43 health workers it arrested 10 days ago, insisting that they were members of the communist New People’s Army who were being trained to make bombs.

With each of the detainees handcuffed to a military escort, they were brought to the Court of Appeals in Manila on a military bus that was escorted by dozens of soldiers in battle gear. Military officials justified the unusually heavy security precautions by saying that the group’s supporters had been planning to rescue the workers en route to the hearings.

The New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has been waging a 41-year Maoist insurgency, the longest in Asia.

Human rights groups, as well as families and colleagues of the defendants, said the health workers have been tortured, threatened and forced to admit that they were guerrillas.

They were arrested Feb. 6 during what they said was a seminar for community health workers. The military says it was a training course in bomb-making.

The case has attracted attention in the Philippines not only because it is the largest set of arrests in the military’s long fight against the insurgency but also because of an apparent refusal by the military to produce the detainees.

After days of the military denying access to the defendants by relatives and others, a habeas corpus petition by their lawyers forced the military to relent.

The Court of Appeals said it will rule Wednesday on the legality of the arrests.

In a forum on Monday, most of the 10 presidential candidates running for election in June criticized the military’s actions in the case, including Gilbert Teodoro, who until recently was the secretary of defense.

Over the objection of the military’s lawyer, the court on Monday allowed one of the 43 health workers, Dr. Alex Montes, a 62-year-old doctor, to testify. Outside the courthouse, dozens of protesters demanded the release of the defendants.

‘‘He testified of the indignity of having someone else lower his underwear for him to be able to urinate,’’ said Renato Reyes, secretary general of the leftist group Bayan, who attended the hearing. He said Dr. Montes testified that he was being held in solitary confinement and was allowed only 15 minutes of sun every day.

Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner, the Philippine military spokesman, said the charges of alleged mistreatment of the detainees and sexual harassment of the women being held was ‘‘propaganda.’’

Maj. Gen. Jorge Segovia, the commander of the army unit that made the arrests, told reporters at a briefing on Monday that the 43 were members of the communist movement’s ‘‘health bureau.’’

But the country’s largest and most influential health and medical groups, including the Philippine Medical Association, said the arrests would discourage medical professionals from serving in poor and underserved areas in the countryside.

In remarks to reporters on Monday, Dr. Alberto Roxas, dean of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, said the case evoked ‘‘chilling images that bespeak the grim days of martial law’’ of the 1970s.

A professor at the university, Dr. Melecia Velmonte, owns the farmhouse where the detainees had conducted their training. She, too, denied that they were rebels.

Philippine rights groups fault military for not bringing suspects to court

By Carlos H. Conde
The New York Times
Published: Feb. 15, 2010

The Philippine military has been criticized for failing to follow a Supreme Court order to present, in open court, 43 health workers who have been arrested and labeled Communist rebels. The refusal is seen by human rights advocates here as a ‘‘dangerous precedent.’’

Last week, the military was ordered by the Supreme Court to produce the 43 people before the Court of Appeals, which was to hear their habeas corpus petition, but the military refused to do this, saying that it had had difficulty arranging the secure transfer of the individuals from a military camp to the court.

Leila de Lima, the chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights, criticized the armed forces leadership on Saturday, calling its refusal ‘‘a really dangerous precedent.’’ She said the detainees had been prevented from seeking a lawyer during the early hours after their arrest and had suffered mistreatment.

A new hearing is scheduled for Monday, but Julius Matibag, a lawyer for the detainees, said he would not be surprised if the military did not produce the prisoners then, either. Such an outcome ‘‘can only mean that it continues to be arrogant by not recognizing the judicial process,’’ Mr. Matibag said.

Critics of the decision, including lawyers representing the detainees, called the military’s move an insult to the court and a challenge to the Philippine judiciary. Some see the arrests as part of the military’s effort to meet a self-imposed deadline to finish off the long Communist insurgency by the time President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo steps down in June.

Some critics said the arrest and alleged mistreatment of the 43 people, who, by many accounts, are health workers, doctors, nurses and midwives, and not rebels, is a throwback to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, who used the military to arrest activists and suppress dissent in the 1970s and 1980s. Ms. de Lima said the detainees had been blindfolded for long periods of time and deprived of sleep. Some of them also complained of having been electrically shocked during interrogation and sexually harassed.

‘‘We must not allow this to happen again,’’ Senator Benigno Aquino III, the son of the late Marcos opponent Corazon Aquino, said last week. Democracy in the Philippines, he said, is being ‘‘eroded methodically under the present administration.’’

Gilbert Teodoro, a former defense secretary, urged the armed forces on Saturday to obey the court.

The 43 people were arrested Feb. 6 by a large force from the military and the police, backed by tanks and military trucks. Officials said they had been arrested because they were being trained to make explosives, a charge denied by the families and colleagues of the detainees.

‘‘If they had 300 men to abduct the 43, why can’t they have some people to transport them to court?’’ said Lovella de Castro, secretary general of Karapatan, a human rights group. ‘‘It is clear to us that they are just ignoring the court. They behave as though they are higher than the Supreme Court.’’

Lt. Col. Noel Detoyato, a spokesman for the army’s Second Division, which made the arrests, defended the military in a newspaper interview, saying the detained were considered dangerous individuals with a history of involvement in the rebel movement. He told The Philippine Daily Inquirer that transporting them required ‘‘thorough security planning’’ because of fears that the vehicles would be ambushed in a rescue attempt.

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