The Philippines’ leading human rights watchdog today unveiled its annual report, calling for an immediate end to President Arroyo’s counterinsurgency program which it blamed for the 1,118 unresolved political murders in the country.

The Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights, which is more popularly known as Karapatan (Rights), said that from January to October 2009, it recorded 77 extrajudicial executions, 204 enforced disappearances and 1,026 victims of torture.

Get a copy of Karapatan’s 2009 Human Rights Report here.

The report did not cover the November 23 massacre in Maguindanao that killed at least 57 civilians, a brutal act said to have been perpetrated by the pro-Arroyo Ampatuan clan. This clan of warlords benefitted from official training of militia and paramilitary groups under President Arroyo’s Executive Order 546. The edict authorized the training and use of “civilian volunteer organizations” in counterinsurgency operations.

Neither did it cover the imposition of martial law in Maguindanao, a move branded by many as unconstitutional and a wrong response to the brutal November 23 massacre.

Karapatan said Arroyo’s counterinsurgency program Oplan Bantay Laya “lumps together” the armed revolutionary movement of the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army with legal, above-ground people’s organizations, media and even the legal opposition. With government troops falsely thinking they are one and the same, civilians and non-combatants are likewise targeted in counterinsurgency operations.

In his report, UN special rapporteur Philip Alston has also identified soldiers as being behind many of the political murders.

Karapatan explained that the Maguindanao massacre was “an incident waiting to happen”.

“Oplan Bantay Laya encouraged the recruitment of paramilitary groups. These paramilitary groups, under the direct control of the military, are also used to protect Arroyo’s political allies like the Ampatuan clan,” said Karapatan.

The human rights group itself is also a target of attacks, with the military routinely calling it a “front” of the CPP-NPA. Several of its human rights workers have been killed since 2001.

But Karapatan has kept on fighting, bringing its campaigns for protection of civil liberties before the United Nations bodies in Geneva and in New York, and before the US Congress in Washington DC.