Vigilante Counterinsurgency and Human Rights in the Philippines: A Statistical Analysis

Abstract

Insurgency and counterinsurgency pose serious documentation, reportage, and credibility problems for the human rights community. Statistical data on personal security rights are far less available than those of socioeconomic rights. This gap in the data represents a challenge to human rights groups.' The gathering of evidence is plagued by a number of factors: the general political disruption; fear of state retaliation on the part of victims, their families, and associates; bureaucratic and other obstacles posed by beleaguered and distrustful regimes; poor communication and transportation infrastructures of third world nations; and criticism and targeting of rights monitors as guerrilla sympathizers. The problem of gathering statistical data on personal security rights is acute enough when regime forces are suspected of systematic violations. The problem becomes more difficult when these forces employ private citizens as groups to counter insurgency. Often these vigilante groups operate anonymously and autonomously in remote rural areas and state security organizations deny their violations. Usually the vigilante organizations are shortlived, making the issue of violations moot by the time public indignation is aroused. Yet the fact that vigilante militias are commonly found guilty of a sustained pattern of gross and systematic human rights abuses renders immediate and adequate statistical information imperative.2