This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. IV, No. 43,
November 28 - December 4, 2004
The Tarlac Massacre: How It
Happened
The violence that marred the
strike of plantation and milling workers of the Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita
on Nov. 16 was bound to happen and government authorities may have to account
for it.
BY RONALYN OLEA AND DABET
CASTAÑEDA
Bulatlat
HACIENDA LUISITA, Tarlac City – The
violence that marred the strike of plantation and milling workers of the
Cojuangco-owned Hacienda Luisita on Nov. 16 was bound to happen and
government authorities may have to be held accountable for it.
This appears to be the finding based on
accounts, testimonies and results of fact-finding missions gathered by Bulatlat.
The same reports pointed to the fact that military and police forces, acting on
orders of the labor department, appeared intent on breaking up the picket of the
striking workers days before the Nov. 16 dispersal that claimed the lives of
seven strikers and the wounding of at least 200 others. (Other reports said 14
were killed.)
The hacienda, which is owned by the family
of former President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, is about 100 kms north of Manila.
For four days beginning Nov. 13, responding
to the tolling of church bells, thousands of residents and sympathizers of the
striking workers came in droves every time police authorities came and
threatened to disperse the picket line of the sugar farm workers.
Thousands of other residents from 10 villages comprising the hacienda,
ULWU leaders said in a statement on Nov. 13, would mass up at night at Gate 1 in
anticipation of a violent dispersal.
Threats of dispersal placed the workers in
high alert after Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas of the Department of Labor and
Employment (DoLE) issued on Nov. 10 an Assumption of Jurisdiction (AJ). Sto.
Tomas ordered the striking workers to return to work so the company could resume
its operations in 24 hours. Apparently, the labor secretary’s order also
directed the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) to dismantle the barricades put up by the strikers and break
up the strike.
That the dispersal order was to be executed by all means was not remote, ULWU president Rene Galang said in an interview with Bulatlat during the early stage of the strike. Since Day 1 of the strike the workers were already being driven out of their picket lines.
At around 6 p.m. on Nov. 6, policemen used
tear gas and water cannons to drive the strikers out of the CAT gate. Another
dispersal took place at the crack of dawn the following day where at least 80
people including children and the elderly were hurt.
Farm workers interviewed by Bulatlat
said tension rose on Nov. 15 as the 6,000 strikers were reinforced by 9,000
residents from the hacienda’s 10 barangays (villages) at Gate 1. They stood
their ground as about 300 policemen came and in formation tried to break the
strikers’ ranks.
To ease the tension, about 10 policewomen
deployed themselves at the police front line. This prompted about 50 women
strikers to also take the frontline to face the policewomen. At the right side
of the ground, male strikers stood across the male policemen.
The police were armed with truncheons and
shields while the hacienda workers had their own truncheons made of pieces of
wood, said Rene Tua, a sugar mill worker and adviser of the CAT labor union (or
Catlu).
Sensing they were outnumbered, the police
were forced to negotiate with the strike leaders, Tua said.
Tulakan lang (just pushing and shoving).
No coming into blows, tear gas or water cannon.
At the count of three, Tua said, the
combined forces of the plantation and sugar mill workers pushed the entire
police contingent. Seemingly winning the battle at this point, Tua said, the
workers became jubilant, others even laughing and jumping until the police,
humiliated by their setback, started hitting the strikers with their truncheons.
In the scuffle, the workers confiscated five
police shields. But they returned the shields after the police said they will be
paying for them if they got lost, Tua said.
A number of strikers were hurt, among them
Catlu president Ricardo Ramos who was hit on the head.
But Tua said the strikers held their ground
until the police were forced to leave before sunset.
Upon the intervention of Bayan Muna Rep.
Satur Ocampo, three Catlu leaders (including Tua) and two others from ULWU
traveled to Makati City in Metro Manila the following for a 10 a.m. meeting with
Jose Cojuangco, Jr. in his mansion.
In a press conference last Nov. 18, Ocampo
related how Cojuangco – brother of former President Aquino - reacted to his
request for dialogue. “Kung
ayaw ko nang papasukin sa bahay ko, bakit magpupumilit pa?” (If I do not
want to accept someone in my home, why would he insist?). Ocampo replied, “Baka
may karapatan din sila” (Maybe, he also has a right).
Tua said, “Ayaw kaming kausapin.
Gusto si Ka Satur lang. Lumabas na kami.” (They did not want to
talk to us. They only wanted Ka
Satur. So we walked out.)
Tua said further, “Sabi niya (Peping),
may AJ na ang DoLE” (Peping said the DoLE had issued an AJ). It was at
this point, he said, that he feared something big was going to happen. He, along
with the other union leaders, went back to Tarlac in haste.
True enough, while the Makati meeting was
ongoing about 300 Army soldiers aboard 19 military trucks slipped through the
east gate of the hacienda.
Emil Paragas, Karapatan Tarlac coordinator,
was at the picket line outside Gate 1 to observe the strike. He related the full
account of the Nov. 16 massacre.
Another major dispersal was at work, Paragas
recalled, this time with the police reinforced by soldiers from the Northern
Luzon Command (Nolcom) based at Camp Aquino which is just across the highway
overlooking the hacienda. Policemen were at the frontline of the dispersal
formation, he said. Behind them were agents of Nolcom.
Three fire trucks and an armored personnel carrier (APC) were positioned
inside Gate 1.
At 3:10 p.m., the police began using water
cannons to drive away the protesters. A few minutes later, tear gas filled the
air. Paragas said there were more than 200 canisters of tear gas thrown at the
workers.
But the strikers were ready, Flor Sibayan,
who was among them, recalled. They brought pails of water from nearby Balite
village and used these to catch the tear gas canisters. Those that hit the
ground were immediately covered with wet cloths and were spilled with water.
“Para lang kaming nanghuhuli ng daga” (It was like we were
catching mice), is how Sibayan described the incident.
The workers, Paragas said, were determined
to maintain the picket line. “Bumabalik ang mga manggagawa kapag humuhupa
na ang epekto ng tear gas” (Workers would return to the picket line every
time the effect of the tear gas weakens).
Then, Paragas continued, thrice the APC
rammed into the gate. Paragas said he heard workers shout, “Nagkasahan na”
(Rifles were cocked).
Then, the shooting began. Paragas said he
saw soldiers armed with long rifles position themselves on the open field at the
right side of the sugar mill and at the left side of the gate. Gunshots also
came from the gate, he said. There is a high probability, he said, that other
soldiers positioned at the left side of the sugar mill used silencers.
Jun David, one of those killed, was hit from
the left side of the CAT, he said. “Katabi ko siya nang tamaan siya ng bala.
Wala siyang armas.” (He was beside me when he was hit. He was
unarmed.) Soldiers gave chase as striking workers ran for safety toward the
nearest barangay.
All told, the volley of gunfire lasted for
two minutes, Paragas said. The Karapatan fact-finding mission later found spent
shells of M-14 and M-16 rifles. Karapatan also said the soldiers used a 60-cal.
machine gun.
The shooting killed seven union members and
residents of Hacienda Luisita. They were David, Jhaivie Basilio, Jesus Laza, Jessie Valdez,
Juancho Sanchez, Adriano Caballero Jr. and Jaime Pastidio.
Six more were reportedly killed but their
bodies have yet to be found. Union officers said they could not identify them
because they were sacadas (seasonal plantation workers) who came from
different provinces of Visayas and Luzon.
Tudla, an independent audio-visual group,
captured a video of a man who was shot in the back.
This man has not been accounted for as of press time.
One witness, a woman sugar farm worker from
Lourdes village, also related the incident to Bulatlat. “Nagtatago
ako sa kanal. Nakita ko yung mama
pumulot ng bato. Binaril siya.
May mga nagsakay sa kanya sa tricycle. Hindi na namin alam nasaan na siya”
(I was hiding in a canal. I
saw a man picking up a stone. He was shot. We do not know where he was taken.),
she said.
Some of those who died could have lived had
they been allowed to be brought directly to the Tarlac provincial hospital. But
soldiers and policemen ordered them at gunpoint to take a longer route – a
12-km ride from Gate 1 to the hospital’s emergency room.
Sibayan said one of the fatalities, Juancho
Sanchez, was still alive when he was brought to the hospital.
But he lost a lot of blood. Sanchez’s feet were run over by the APC.
Unable to rise, he lost consciousness when a soldier hit him on the face.
Sibayan, who herself was hit in the left shoulder, said she could still hear
Sanchez breathing while lying beside her in the hospital bed. Sanchez succumbed
to his wounds that night.
About 72 wounded strikers soaked in their
own blood as they were hurled into the Emergency Room; 34 of them sustained
gunshot wounds.
In a press conference held two days later in
Quezon City, Catlu lawyer Noel Neri said that the military prevented families of
victims from immediately recovering their dead.
Aside from the dead and wounded, 111 others,
including 16 women and two minors, were arrested and charged with physical
assault, resisting persons in authority and malicious mischief. Neri said most
of those arrested were actually sacadas from Negros, Batangas and other
provinces who were picked up by the military from their bunkhouse.
Accounts also told of soldiers mowing down
the father of a baby who died of asphyxiation resulting from the tear gas
attack; of Basilio who was reportedly strangled and hanged in the barbed wire at
Gate 1 before he was shot dead.
Testimonies by scores of many eyewitnesses
and the victims themselves, video shots and still photos indicate that the
protesters were unarmed and that some gunshots came from snipers positioned in
the open field to the right facing the sugar mill and on top of the reservoir
farther back, and from the soldiers near the entrance of Gate 1.
Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano, who was one
of those who went to investigate the massacre on Nov. 17, said he and his group
were on their way to the hacienda when 11 truckloads of soldiers rumbled out of
the area toward Camp Aquino.
Mariano said he even talked to Col. Romeo
Reyes of Nolcom. In their brief talk, Reyes admitted to Mariano that he and his
men arrived at the picket line at 2 p.m. of Nov. 16.
The colonel also said there were 271 of them along with two APCs.
Mariano would say later, “Sila ay
naroon nang maganap ang pamamaslang”(They [military] were there when the
killings occurred).
In a Nov. 23 statement, Galang accused the
Cojuangcos and the military and police dispersal teams of a “deliberate and
premeditated intent…to kill sugar mill and farm workers on strike.” He also
said the killings were committed with the “full consent and awareness of the
Arroyo administration and DoLE.”
Meanwhile, Executive Secretary Eduardo
Ermita, a retired four-star general who occupied key government positions during
the presidency of Aquino, said the New People's Army was involved in the Nov. 16
killings.
During a meeting at the Cojuangco residence
attended by city and barangay officials Nov. 18, Rep. Benigno Aquino III's
commented that NPA rebels may have possibly infiltrated the strikers.
In another statement released to the media,
the Cojuangco family alleged that “outside forces are influencing the
situation, resorting to intimidation of non-striking workers and even to the
destruction of millions of pesos worth of crops.”
However, Barangay chairman Rodel Galang of
Barangay Balete, Tarlac City countered that he knows all the people who
converged at Gate 1 on Nov. 16. All were unarmed, he said, adding that there are
no NPA men in his barangay or elsewhere in the picket site at the time of the
shooting.
In a statement sent through email, Gregorio
"Ka Roger" Rosal, spokesperson of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP), said that the NPA had no participation in the Nov. 16
Hacienda Luisita demonstration.
Rosal added that the NPA had no hand in the
mobilization of thousands of peasants supporting the workers' strike at CAT.
“The NPA is careful not to step within the bounds of the people's legal
struggle precisely to prevent reactionaries from using this to justify the use
of armed means to quell the people's legitimate unarmed struggles,” he said.
On the contrary, striking workers reported
seeing suspected military infiltrators in their ranks.
During the shooting, Tua said, a plainclothesman was pointing at him and
the other union leaders, apparently as to be shot or arrested.
During the funeral march of the massacre victims on Nov. 21, mourners
caught a suspected agent of Nolcom taking pictures.
“Nahuli namin kasi hindi siya marunong gumamit ng kamera. Nang tanungin siya, pang-souvenir lang daw” (We caught
him because he doesn’t know how to use the camera.
When our colleagues asked him, he said it’s just for souvenir), he
said.
The night after the massacre, Tua said about
80 of the plantation and sugar workers returned to the picket line. “Naisip
namin baka dukutin na lang kami” (We were thinking we could just be
abducted). The following morning, the number of people at the picket line
swelled with the return of other union members and their families.
The Nov. 21 funeral march was attended by more than 6,000 people. At the head of the march-rally was a streamer that read “Tuloy ang laban! Tuloy ang welga!” (The struggle continues. The strike goes on.) Bulatlat
© 2004 Bulatlat ■ Alipato Publications
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