"Police accused of torture in Philippines" by Jim Gomez | Associated Press January 29, 2014
MANILA — Philippine police officers played a ‘‘wheel of torture’’ game to have fun and punish criminal suspects during interrogations, including bouts of punching named after boxing star Manny Pacquiao, human rights officials and activists said Tuesday.
A close AmeriKan ally!
Under the game, detainees — mostly suspected drug traffickers — were punched if the ‘‘torture wheel’’ stopped at ‘‘20 seconds Manny Pacman,’’ Pacquiao’s nickname, or hung upside down if it stopped at a punishment called ‘‘30-second bat,’’ Amnesty International said. The London-based rights group called it despicable.
Oh, well, then they deserved it.
A picture of the multicolored wheel provided by the Commission on Human Rights showed several other tortures, including ‘‘3 minutes zombies’’ and ‘‘30-second duck walk/ferris wheel’’ but it was not clear what those punishments were.
‘‘It’s horrible,’’ the commission chairwoman, Loretta Ann Rosales, said. ‘‘It’s like a game for entertainment. We’re trying to correct this mindset based on a human rights approach to policing but obviously it may take a lot of time.’’
The mindset of authority figures everywhere it seems.
Allegations of torture have particular resonance in the Philippines, which emerged from a brutal era of dictatorship nearly three decades ago. Thousands of victims during dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s rule won a class action suit against his estate for torture and other rights violations in 1992 in Hawaii.
Once again, AmeriKa's guy.
A peaceful, army-backed ‘‘people power’’ revolt ousted Marcos in 1986.
Tricky road, but so many nations need that. Look to Thailand for a good example.
President Benigno Aquino III, son of revered pro-democracy leaders who fought Marcos, has pledged to prosecute violators of human rights. Rights groups say violations have continued with impunity.
We didn't even get that from Obummer. In fact, he's continued the practice of torture, literally offshoring it.
The violations allegedly took place at a police intelligence office in BiΓ±an, south of Manila. The office has not been accredited as a detention center and was holding suspects illegally, Rosales said.
She said her commission got a tip this month on alleged abuses of more than 40 detainees. Maltreatment allegedly occurred last year and this month. Rosales said she has urged top police officials to pursue criminal complaints against about 10 officers who were implicated in the abuses.
Police spokesman Reuben Theodore Sindac, a senior superintendent, said several officers were taken into custody and an inquiry is under way.
Detainees said they were beaten, electrocuted, or hit by steel bars, baseball bats, a chair, or a helmet. One said a police officer pointed an assault rifle at him, and one said police threatened his relatives.
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Sort of makes this next item understandable:
"182 escape from jail in Philippines" | Associated Press January 31, 2014
MANILA — Nearly 200 inmates complaining of hunger and squalid conditions escaped from a Philippine provincial jail in an eastern province that was devastated by a monster storm in November, police said Thursday.
The all-but-forgotten typhoon.
Authorities recaptured 148 of the 182 escapees hours after they stormed out of the Leyte provincial jail in Palo town at dawn Thursday. Police were hunting down the remaining 34, who are facing trial on charges including drug trafficking, rape, and murder, said regional police chief Henry Losanes.
Were they tortured, too?
It was not immediately clear how the detainees escaped in such large numbers.
Losanes said the recaptured inmates told investigators they escaped because of limited food and poor conditions and the slow prosecution of their cases.
Typhoon Haiyan hit Leyte island on Nov. 8 and barreled through the central Philippines, killing more than 6,200 people.
That is what the death toll rose to?
Dozens of jailbreaks occur in the Philippines each year due to lax security and dilapidated prisons.
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Terrorists must have escaped:
"40 killed in Philippines just days after peace pact" New York Times January 30, 2014
Hate to say I told you so, and I did and still do.
Someone spoiled the peace, huh?
MANILA — At least 40 people were killed and a school district supervisor was kidnapped in separate events on the island of Mindanao, just days after a landmark peace deal was struck with the largest Muslim insurgency group in the Philippines, officials said Wednesday.
The bloodiest battles involved a group opposed to the peace deal, but military commanders said the timing of the fighting was not related to the announcement of the peace agreement and was initiated by police officers and soldiers trying to arrest rebel fighters.
“There is no direct link between the signing of the peace agreement and this operation,” Colonel Ramon Zagala said in a phone interview. “But it has an effect on the peace process. We consider this group to be a spoiler to the peace agreement.”
Gee, who would want to do that? What empire would want an excuse to maintain a presence?
On Saturday, the Philippine government finalized the details of a peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that would give the group control over an autonomous area of Mindanao and let it share the wealth from the area’s resources in return for the rebels gradually giving up their weapons.
It's the new way of fighting the empire and WWIII! Breakaway from the dominate or arbitrary authority and become independent!
Who wouldn't like that?
The deal seeks to end decades of violence in the area and bring economic growth to the struggling region.
I'm all for that!
Many groups are opposed to the peace deal and are seeking a separate, strict Islamic state on Mindanao.
The hallmark of a CIA presence!
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Drug dealers still running loose, too:
"Police seize $30m of drugs in Manila" | Associated Press January 25, 2014
MANILA — Philippine police arrested four men and seized $30 million worth of methamphetamine on Friday in the second-largest drug bust in Manila in 10 days.
The men were in a van loaded with six wooden crates containing 598 pounds of crystal methamphetamine when they were intercepted by police, said Senior Superintendent Bartolome Tobias, head of the Philippine National Police anti-illegal drugs task force. The arrests followed a tip from an informant.
Oh, no. The Philippines has government instigators, too. AmeriKan FBI full of 'em.
“Each gram of drug the police are able to remove from our communities is already something because we are able to reduce the amount of drugs poisoning our people,” said Arturo Cacdac, chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
I agree. Heroin, cocaine, meth, all evil.
He said one of the four suspects was a bulk supplier of drugs for street dealers and had been under surveillance for two months.
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Terrorists came up again on the spin of the wheel:
"Abducted Filipino filmmakers are found safe" | Associated Press February 21, 2014
MANILA — Philippine marines found two Lebanese-born Filipino sisters on Thursday who either escaped or were freed by Abu Sayyaf extremists after eight months of jungle captivity on a dangerous southern island where they had traveled to make a documentary about poor farmers, officials said.
Big difference on how they made it out.
Colonel Jose Cenabre said Nadjoua and Linda Bansil were found in a mountain town on Jolo island.
Abu Sayyaf gunmen abducted the sisters on June 22 of last year in Sulu province, where they had traveled to do a video documentary called ‘‘Cafe Armalite,’’ about the lives and culture of poor coffee farmers in the predominantly Muslim region.
The Abu Sayyaf had demanded a ransom in exchange for the sisters’ freedom but Cenabre said it was not clear if money had changed hands.
Abu Sayyaf militants still hold about a dozen hostages in the jungles of Sulu, including two European bird watchers who were kidnapped two years ago, Cenabre said.
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Looks like tourists should stay away from the Philippines:
"Gunman kills mayor and 3 others at Manila airport | Associated Press December 21, 2013
MANILA — A gunman attacked a Philippine mayor as he left the country’s main airport on Friday along with crowds of Christmas travelers, killing him, his wife, a child, and another man, authorities and witnesses said.
The gunman fired on Mayor Ukol Talumpa of Labangan outside Terminal 3 at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport, named after President Benigno Aquino III’s father, who was assassinated there 30 years ago.
Hmmmmmm!
Who wanted the mayor dead?
The terminal handles international and domestic flights, and is supposed to be a relatively well-guarded facility. Talumpa had arrived from Zamboanga del Sur, the southern province where Labangan is located.
Yeah, well, you know....!!!
There was no word on a possible motive, but violent attacks linked to political rivalries, family feuds, and business disputes are common in the Philippines, and have left hundreds of people dead over the years.
Puts a different light on such strange events in AmeriKa, doesn't it?
Talumpa himself had survived at least two earlier assassination attempts, according to local media reports.
And he didn't have better security?
The mayor and his wife were declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital....
The airport’s general manager, Jose Angel Honrado said that investigators were trying to determine how many attackers were involved. Witnesses, however, saw only one gunman, who sped away on a waiting motorcycle that was driven by another man, Honrado said.
Another lone gunman!
SIGH!
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Globe's wheel stopped spinning.
