By ANTHONY IAN CRUZ
Malaya
Nov. 17, 2007

THE Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union yesterday expressed “strong condemnation” of the Tuesday night blast at the Batasan Pambansa which killed Basilan Rep. Wahab Akbar and three others and injured about a dozen including two congressmen.

“This is an utterly reprehensible act,” said the IPU president Pier Ferdinando Casini.

The IPU, which brings together 146 national parliaments and legislatures, said it has transmitted its condolences to the House leadership.

In New York, Gabriela Network USA dubbed the Batasan bombing as “an escalation of the policy of violent political repression” under the Arroyo government, and called on the country to revisit the role of US troops in the worsening situation.

Annalisa Enrile, the group’s spokeswoman, said the Arroyo government should be considered a suspect in the blast which also hurt Gabriela Reps. Luz Ilagan and Henry Teves of Negros Oriental.

“The assassination of political luminaries and leaders falls squarely into the Bantay Laya paradigm,” Enrile said referring to the military’s counter-insurgency campaign which is being blamed by local and international observers for the nearly 900 cases of extrajudicial killing since Arroyo took office in 2001.

Gabriela Network USA also called for an end to US military presence in the country, claiming that “bombs and blasts have endlessly occurred since US troops came back to the Philippines en masse.”

“Wherever the US military goes, an escalation of political violence occurs,” Enrile said. “They’re all over Mindanao but violence has not ceased there and has even gone from bad to worse in a nationwide scale.”