Military’s
‘Death Squad’ Claims 4 More Victims
Human
rights worker-poet, 3 farmers killed in second massacre
After
the shooting, villagers heard one of the paramilitary men boasting, “They’ve
all been wiped out. They’re now in the afterlife. It’s already peaceful
there. Go get them.”
By
Daisy C. Gonzales
and
Carlos H. Conde
Bulatlat.com
DAVAO
CITY – Health worker Jasmine Badilla was giving basic health training
to 21 peasants inside a church in a hinterland village when they heard gunshots
that went on for about two minutes. “It sounded like bamboos cracking,”
Badilla, who works for the Tribal Filipino Program for Community Development
Inc., says. And it sounded so near.
In
fact, the shots were fired in sitio Bukatol, barangay Kinawayan, about three
kilometers from sitio Sariri, barangay Caridad, in Arakan town, North Cotabato,
where Badilla was teaching Lumad peasants how to do First aid and how to use
herbs to treat common illnesses. The villagers were alarmed, Badilla recalls.
“They wanted the gunshots checked immediately,” she says. It was about
noontime on April 5, 2002.
At
around 2 p.m., a group of paramilitary men known as Cafgus (Citizens Armed Force
Geographical Unit) passed by Sariri. They came from where the gunshots had been
fired and, according to villagers, one of the Cafgus declared: “They are all
dead! If they’re allowed to live, they would come back here.”
The
declaration was chilling because last year, not very far from Bukatol, a group
of peasants had been massacred by paramilitary men in sitio Tababa. The case
remains unsolved up to this day.
Carnage
The
villagers took it upon themselves to organize a group of about 40 of them to go
to Bukatol. What they found there was pure carnage.
Dahilis
Lagkoman, the 45-year-old barangay captain of barangay Kinawayan, was one of
those who went to Bukatol. “The bodies were on the ground, in front of the
porch of a house,” he says. “The bodies” were those of Benjaline
Hernandez, 22; Vivian Andrade, 18; Crisanto Amora, 23; and Labaon Sinunday, in
his 30s. All of them, notes Lagkoman, had their arms raised, “as though they
were parrying blows or were in an act of surrender.”
Inside
the hut lay the only testament to the victims’ last few moments: the food that
they were about to partake had been prepared.
The
villagers brought the bodies to the church in Sariri where Badilla was
conducting the training. Badilla knew Hernandez, who was known to friends and
relatives as Beng. “But I couldn’t recognize her,” Badilla says, because
her face was so horribly disfigured. “All that was intact was her forehead.
Her jaw was shattered. Her eyes were open.”
Badilla
touched Hernandez’s head. “It was so soft,” she says. The human-rights
alliance Karapatan, where Hernandez was the deputy secretary-general for
Mindanao, said in a statement on April 8 that Hernandez “was apparently
riddled with bullet wounds in the neck, upper right chest and left palm. Her
skull was crushed, seemingly hit with a blunt object. Her mouth, jaw and teeth
were disfigured by the exiting bullet (that hit her) neck. Bruises were found on
her face, hands and body. Her chest was also burned, an indication she was shot
at close range.”
The
statement signed by Karapatan chairman Bishop Felixberto Calang of the
Philippine Independent Church also pointed out that Amora was hit in the head
and stomach while Andrade’s head was blown off. Sinunday managed to run a few
meters, according to witnesses, but was shot nonetheless.
Without warning
The
culprits, according to Karapatan and its witnesses, were elements of Cafgus led
by a staff sergeant of the 12th Special Forces Company in Arakan
Valley. Karapatan said six Cafgus, “without warning,” strafed the hut where
the four were about to take lunch. The four managed to jump out of the hut but
were rounded up by the Cafgus, who pushed them to the ground. One eyewitness
told Karapatan that he heard one of the victims pleading: “Enough, please. We
are hurt and we have to see the doctor.”
After
the shooting, villagers heard one of the Cafgus boasting that “they’ve all
been wiped out. They’re now in the afterlife. It’s already peaceful there.
Go get them.”
Residents
also heard another Cafgu saying, “You should have seen how the women cried!”
This indicates, according to Karapatan, that Hernandez and Andrade were pleading
for mercy. During the initial examination of Hernandez’s remains, witnesses
said they saw what could only be tear “marks” down her cheeks.
To
friends, relatives and fellow activists, Hernandez’s death was particularly
painful. At the time of her death, Hernandez was involved in human-rights work
while at the same time serving as the vice president for Mindanao of the College
Editors Guild of the Philippines. She was a student at the Ateneo de Davao where
she was also one of the editors of the school paper Atenews.
Her
colleagues in Karapatan said Hernandez was in Arakan to follow-up on the Tababa
massacre case, which Karapatan had investigated. She was also there on the
invitation of the Arakan Progressive People’s Organizations (APPO) to do a
research on the peasants’ situation in the area.
Research,
fact-finding
Italian
priest Fr. Fausto Tentorio PIME, executive director of the Tribal Filipino
Program for Community Development Inc., remembers receiving Hernandez sometime
in the first week of March. “It was like a courtesy visit to me by Beng as the
areas covered by her research are part of the communities we are also
serving,” Tentorio said during a press conference last week. “She was also
going to check on the victims and survivors of the Tababa killings. She
explained that she led the fact-finding mission on that incident and that
Karapatan is making a post-incident documentation,” the priest added.
The
Arakan Massacre, as it has come to be known, elicited widespread condemnation in
Mindanao. “While Karapatan has previously documented and condemned several
cases of human-rights violations inflicted on hapless civilians and violations
of international humanitarian laws, the murder of Hernandez signals an alarming
development in the human-rights situation now prevailing in the country,” says
PIC Bishop Felixberto Calang. The murders, he adds, “signals a dangerous trend
toward physical elimination by the AFP of people whom they perceive as obstacles
to their fascist and terrorist acts especially in the rural areas.”
Bayan
Muna Rep. Crispin Beltran, who flew in here to condole with the victims’
families, condemned the massacre and promised to initiate a congressional
investigation into the case.
Bayan
Muna national deputy secretary-general Robert de Castro, in a eulogy at
Hernandez’s wake here last week, said the massacre was just the latest in a
series of violence directed at activists and progressives, particularly those
from Bayan Muna, which saw its leaders nationwide being killed one after the
other this past year.
Disband Cafgus
Davao
City councilor Angela Librado, a former CEGP officer herself, also raised alarm
over the violence targeted at individuals like Hernandez. She has since asked
the national government to disband the Cafgus, whom she blamed for many
human-rights violations in the countryside.
“The
AFP is gratified with the performance of the Cafgus as these paramilitary
elements are the vilest (and low-cost) implementors of the government’s
anti-insurgency campaign,” she said in a statement. “Beng’s cold-blooded
murder by her Cafgu captors poses further questions on the continued Cafgu
recruitment. Cafgus are modern-day atrocious CHDFs of the Marcos martial law
years,” she said. She described Cafgus as “terrorists in the midst of poor
hinterland villages.”
Lagkoman,
the barangay captain, says his constituents are worried about the presence of
Cafgus. “They behave like they own our place. They throw their weight around.
They have no respect for civilian authority. The government should do something
about this,” he says.
Even
Fr. Tentorio, while admitting that he has friends in the communities who are
Cafgus, is likewise alarmed by the abuses committed by the paramilitary men. He
thinks that within the Cafgu organization in Arakan Valley, there reigns a
“death squad that does the dirty work.”
The
military has denied any violation of human rights in the Arakan Massacre. Maj.
Julieto Ando, spokesman of the 6th Infantry Division based in
Cotabato City, said Hernandez was with a group of New People’s Army and that
the killings were the result of a “legitimate encounter.” He said the Cafgus
were alerted about the presence of the NPA and immediately checked out the area.
He added: “Our soldiers are trained to respect human rights.”
The
Armed Forces of the Philippines did not stop there, however. Last week, they
released to the media a supposed diary of Hernandez that, the military implied,
proved that she was an NPA member.
The
military in Southern Mindanao also released a statement by 701st Infantry
Brigade spokesperson Maj. Vic Tomas that said “Beng was also our friend.”
Tomas’s statement also said that Hernandez had supposedly been in contact with
the AFP, implying that she had been friendly with them. Tomas also said that
Hernandez had grown disillusioned with Karapatan and that because of this she
was “punished” by sending her to the countryside.
“Whoever
sent Beng… to Arakan should be equally liable and responsible for their
deaths. Allowing NPA armed men to act as their security made them as baits for
government forces conducting security patrols in that area,” Tomas said.
Tomas’s
statement was condemned by Hernandez’s colleagues, friends and relatives. Joel
Virador, Karapatan’s secretary-general and Hernandez’s direct superior,
criticized Tomas for sowing intrigue against the group. “He can now say
whatever he wants to say about Beng and about us because Beng is not here
anymore to refute him,” Virador says. Virador also calls the release of the
alleged diary of Hernandez as a “cheap shot” aimed at sowing further
intrigue.
Hernandez
was buried here on Saturday in a simple funeral. Prior to that, she was honored
by all sorts of people from Southern Mindanao, many of them vowing to continue
the human-rights work that she had been doing. One of her friends said: “They
may have killed her but not the idea that she fought for – an idea of justice,
equality and freedom.” Bulatlat.com
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