Gov’t. spies hound labor activists

Despite the holding of an ILO mission to investigate labor repression, state harassment of independent labor activists in the Philippines has continued unabated, resulting in the death of one veteran union organizer and repeated intimidation of a foreign labor rights watchdog volunteer.

The Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER), a labor think-tank working closely with trade unions and other workers’ organizations, revealed in a statement that aggressive intelligence operations has claimed the life of Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) organizer Danilo Belano and hounded a foreign trade union volunteer.

Agents of the Intelligence Services of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) accosted Belano on November 24 near his house in Paco, Manila City and tried to blackmail him into cooperating with them in surveilling other labor activists. The following day, they called his family to report that he was confined at the Ospital ng Maynila (a Manila City hospital) due to massive cardiac arrest. He died soon after members of his family arrived at the hospital. Belano, who spent four decades of his life organizing unions under KMU, had a long-running heart condition and was taking maintenance medication prior to the incident.

“The (intelligence) agents threatened to inflict harm on his family if he wouldn’t ‘cooperate’ with them,” said Lito Ustarez, Vice Chairperson of KMU. He added that Baleno had bloated stomach when he was seen by his family members at the hospital, leading them to suspect he had been manhandled by the operatives alongside being mentally tortured.

On the other hand, the foreign volunteer was surveilled closely four times in just several weeks immediately after assisting in the International Labor Organization (ILO) investigation. In one incident, a police agent showed him his identification card and sidearm and placed a clutchbag on the volunteer’s lap containing spare bullets for the gun. In another instance on November 13, an agent took pictures of him while he was dining in a sidewalk restaurant in Quezon City with EILER Executive Director Joselito Natividad. The police agent later showed his badge and his .45 Colt semiautomatic to the two, who had just come in from a forum earlier that day commemorating the assassination of KMU leader Rolando Olalia in 1986.

“Apparently, it was an operation to intimidate the volunteer, and possibly also me for being conspicuous in labor-related activities. This contributes to a consistent pattern wherein the government seeks to create an impression within the international community of rectifying its previous repressive policies on labor, while actually intensifying these at the ground-level and through less conspicuous modes of implementation,” said Natividad.

The EILER director further linked such incidents to the recent Maguindanao Massacre, which claimed the lives of more than 30 media workers and practitioners, warning that this could be a prelude to a “failure of elections” scenario in 2010.

Said Natividad: “Taken together with the hasty adoption of AES that is seemingly designed to break down, the creation of a crisis and terror-ridden scenario in the run-up to May 2010 (elections) will certainly benefit the status quo and preserve President Arroyo’s power base in one form or another. The public and civil society organizations must be continuously vigilant to prevent such a scenario happening.”