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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 12 April 27 - May 3, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 12 April 27 - May 3, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
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Essay
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DAVAO CITY – For more than a week in early April, Aminah Ala, a 44-year-old fruit vendor in Maa, this city, searched for her husband in every police station in the city. With the help of human-rights advocates from the group Karapatan and accompanied by her daughters, Aminah pored over every police blotter and inspected every cell. Almost
a month after his abduction on April 5, a day after the bombing of the Sasa
wharf in this city, Abdullah Ala, 47, is still missing. Abdullah was a respected
leader of a Muslim community in barangay Maa, where he ran an auto repair shop.
Armed and masked men snatched him while buying a welding rod at a hardware in
the barangay. |
Aminah Ala contemplating her husband's faith. "What did he ever do?" she said. |
“Each
time I left a police station without my husband, I lose a little hope,” Aminah
said. “What did my husband ever do?” she said tearfully. At each police
station, Aminah would plead at the police officers. “All I ask is for you to
produce him. If he did something wrong, jail him but please produce him,” she
would say.
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The
police had denied a hand in the abduction of Abdullah. But after his kidnapping,
five more men, all of them Muslims, were abducted in much the same way. None of
them has surfaced. Human-rights
groups are concerned, naturally, especially because the abductions followed the
declaration of a “state of lawless violence” in Davao City that resulted in
the deployment of hundreds of troops to the city. Since their deployment in
early April, the troops have been conducting raids and surveillance particularly
in Muslim villages. Muslim residents have complained that the troops would knock
down their doors in the middle of the night and interrogate them. The troops
have also been marking houses with the X sign, baffling and terrorizing the
Muslim residents. Abdullah Ala was a respected Muslim leader and Barangay Maa Development Council member. |
Duterte
has defended the troops’ actions, saying that he took in the troops not as
decorations in the streets of Davao but to do real anti-terrorism work. The
deployment and the disappearances also followed the mayor’s pronouncement a
day after the Sasa bombing that he would also strike fear in the hearts of
terrorists. Duterte is known for his support of extra-judicial methods of
delivering justice, as in the case of youth offenders in the city, dozens of
whom have ended up dead over the years.
Aminah
Ala showing the only picture
where her husband is recognizable.
Aminah (in hijab) with human rights workers
at the Sta. Ana police station. She is accompanied by Karapatan's Ariel Casilao (seated).
But
to Muslims like Rosman Lupon, a relative of the Alas who was himself abducted
over the airport bombing but later released, what Duterte is doing is nothing
but “persecution.” “We are easy targets because we are Muslims,” Lupon
said.
Indeed,
Abdullah’s disappearance was particularly chilling for Aminah, whose brother
was taken by the military during the Marcos dictatorship on suspicion that he
was an NPA member. The brother was never heard from ever since.
Aminah with her daughters at the Buhangin police station.
Aminah and human rights workers inspect the records
of the Matina police station.
Aminah and company at the Matina police station.
“The
Muslim community is highly terrorized by these law enforcers. They have become
the real targets of this ‘war against terrorism.’ And to think President
Arroyo did not have to declare martial law,” said Ariel Casilao, the
secretary-general of Karapatan in Southern Mindanao.
Kalinaw
Mindanao, a coalition of cause-oriented groups in Mindanao, sees the declaration
of “State of Lawless Violence” as a “counter-insurgency measure”
implemented by the Arroyo administration.
In the meantime, the families of the desaparecidos, like Aminah, continue to wait and despair. Bulatlat.com
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