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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
In the Valley of Death
A recent fact-finding and relief mission
in Compostela Valley
uncovers the Philippine military’s trail of abuses against hapless
civilians.
By Cheryll Fiel
Bulatlat
LAAK, Compostela
Valley – One day in November, a knock came at the door of the parish
church here. A resident of one of the town’s villages appeared at the
doorstep, asking for help. The military, the man said, had entered their
communities and were committing abuses against the residents.
To the villagers, the
recent incidents of government abuses brought back ugly
memories of Laak’s
past -- a past that’s all-too familiar in its brutality: the
harassment, the torture, the disrespect toward Lumad culture.
Early last month, an
“interfaith, peace and mercy mission” visited Lorenzo Sarmiento,
Kinabuhian, and Candiis, three of the Laak communities where intensified
military operations had taken place. Human-rights alliance Karapatan,
medical and health organizations, Church groups, students, professionals
and ordinary residents brought relief goods, food and medicines to the
communities.
No man’s land
Until 1994, Lorenzo
Sarmiento was a no man’s land. Years of strife, brought on mainly by the
militarization of the community, had driven many of the original residents
away. (Majority of them belong to the Dibabawon tribe.) They returned to
the area only in 1994, only to relive the horror once again a decade
later.
The military first
launched massive operations in Lorenzon Sarmiento in February 2004. Over
warm binignit (sweet porridge) and hot coffee, the residents
recalled that ordeal.
Insong Amac, a
villager, said the military had lined up all the men, including the
children, at the basketball court from seven in the morning until noon.
Under the burning sun, soldiers called out the names of residents off a
list. “It was a method they usually use to sift the area of any NPAs,”
Amac said, referring to the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the
Communist Party of the Philippines that has been waging a Maoist
revolution in the Philippines for more than three decades now.
The soldiers, who
belonged to the 72nd Infantry Battalion and who were under the
command of a certain Lieutenant Suaybaguio, singled out three of Amac’s
neighbors. The troops put pails, which had been used to collect food
scraps for pigs, over their heads.
“The soldiers were
mocking them while questioning them about the whereabouts of the NPAs,”
Amac narrated.
Last Nov. 11, the
soldiers came back to Lorenzo Sarmiento. This time, the victim was Amac's
own father, Manangkis Amac, who was also the tribal chieftain. Amac and
his father were working on an unfinished house when the soldiers, around
40 of them, arrived. The Scout Rangers spoke in Tagalog and had no name
patches on their uniforms. Some of them even wore their uniforms inside
out.
A soldier called out
to the Amacs, asking them why they were suddenly hammering the nails much
too swiftly. Were they sending out signals to the NPA? the soldier wanted
to know.
“One of the soldiers
poked an M-14 rifle to my father’s right side, where he had just had an
appendectomy,” Insong Amac said. His mother rushed to intervene but one of
the troops pushed her aside, he added.
When the soldiers
learned that Manangkis Amac was the chieftain, they tried to apologize but
it was too late. “They already showed disrespect,” Insong Amac said.
Narciso Olila,
another resident, suffered the most during the military operation. The
soldiers forced him to the ground, where he was repeatedly punched and
kicked.
“I must have received
around 10 punches,” recalled Olila, who was still recovering from malaria
when the soldiers came. The hardest blows came from one soldier called
Ledesma. “After each punch, they asked me where I took the wounded NPA. I
didn’t know anything about any wounded NPA,” Olila said.
The soldiers then put
a cellophane bag over Olila’s head. “I was able to withstand the
cellophane for only three minutes,” Olila said. Then he started gasping
for air, at the same time shouting for help, his muffled cries tearing at
the heart of his fellow villagers who had been ordered by the soldiers to
turn their backs and look away. Olila’s wife Virginia pleaded for her
husband’s life.
Olila said he
urinated blood after his harrowing ordeal. “They said they were going to
finish me off if they saw me again buying rice for the NPA,” he said. “But
I own a sari-sari store! It is impossible for me not to travel to
the town center to buy supplies since my store is our only source of
income.”
Artemio Kaibigan,
another villager, said the soldiers took 13 of the chickens in his yard.
The chickens, he said, cost P2,500 all in all, at P105 per kilo. “I had
taken care of the mother hen. It was supposed to breed me more chickens.
But they took it away. In return, they just handed me a kilo of rice and a
can of sardines,” Kaibigan grumbled.
Afraid that the
soldiers might harm more of them, the residents decided to offer to the
military an 80-kilo pig. Later, the residents were told to gather at the
village hall for a meeting. There, the soldiers made fun of the residents
by asking them to guess the battalion they belonged to; the soldiers never
really introduced themselves to the villagers.
“They told us that
they are a different brood of soldiers because they don’t beat up people.
I could only smirk in a corner,” Olila said. In that meeting, the soldiers
told the residents to rise up against the NPA.
Bullets between
fingers
The military
descended on Kinabuhian, a Lumad community that is also known as Kilometer
3, on Nov. 6 and left a trail of abuses, such as torture and illegal
searches.
Soldiers tortured
three Kinabuhian residents that day, inserting bullets between their
fingers and then squeezing the victims’ hands if they failed to answer
questions satisfactorily, said the tribal chieftain, who requested that
his name not be used for this story. He is being hunted down by the
military for a crime that the chieftain insisted he didn’t commit.
Ricky Antay, Boy
Mabido, Jerry Tinoy, Lolong Bacod and Robert Pangulibay also told the
mission participants that they were beaten up and tied with a rope while
being interrogated.
What angered the
tribal chieftain the most was the military’s disrespect toward their
culture. “They took the bangkaw (traditional spear), which had been
handed down to us by generations, and broke its head, which was made of
gold. The soldiers took it away,” the chieftain said.
“Forced surrender”
Candiis was the last
village the mission visited. There were five cases of “forced surrender”
of Bayan Muna members to elements of the 60th Infantry Battalion on Nov.
6.
Dominador Perocho
said that, on Nov. 6, he went to the community center, where the military
had been calling out names from a list. When his name was called, Perocho
raised his hand.
“They were all armed.
I was afraid they might beat me up, just like what they did to residents
in Lorenzo Sarmiento and Kilometer 33,” Perocho said. The soldiers then
asked some of the men to “surrender.”
But Perocho did not
budge. “Surrender for what?” he recalled thinking. “I did not surrender. I
just presented myself to prevent them from harboring suspicion on me. They
then asked me to train for the Cafgu (a paramilitary group) but I’d rather
leave the community and find work elsewhere," Perocho said.
Doming has decided to
leave Candiis soon. He said he does not feel safe living in the community
anymore. The coconut farm he tends does not matter so much to him now.
“What is important is I can take my family out of the village,” he said.
‘Who are these
people?’
Fifty meters from
where we were interviewing Perocho, burly men flagged down our vehicles.
As soon as the engines stopped, the gun-wielding men surrounded us. We
felt we were in a very dangerous situation.
“Here they are!” we
could hear one of the soldiers saying. “Who are these people?”
They were talking
about us as though we were fugitives. We felt very vulnerable. We saw
Armalite-clutching men who were not even in proper military uniforms.
Since Nov. 6, they had been occupying the barangay center and the houses
by the roadside.
Later, Karapatan-Southern
Mindanao secretary general Ariel Casilao and two medical doctors who
joined the mission got down to negotiate with the commanding officer who
identified himself as Lieutenat Judit.
As the negotiation
went on, we increasingly felt like preys in a cage at the back of the
truck. The Armalite-wielding men surrounded us, cocking their guns, some
of them playfully aiming their weapons at us. Some of them positioned
themselves on the hilly side of the road, the better to have a clearer
view of us. For many of us who joined the mission, it was our first time
to experience being held at gunpoint.
The soldiers started
asking us questions: where we were from, what organizations we belonged
to. They even ordered the men to get off the trucks but we insisted that
the negotiation was still going on and that we follow only what the
negotiating team would tell us.
Some of the soldiers
attempted to climb the vehicle and to open our bags; they said we might be
hiding grenades. But we told them they had no right to do so. Without
asking permission from the driver, they took gasoline from the barrel
loaded on the truck.
Images of being fired
at or dragged to the bushes flashed in my mind. The men kept silent; to
keep the soldiers from being provoked, only the women dealt with them. We
felt helpless. There was no cellphone signal in the area.
They released us only
an hour later. Their commanding officer insisted that we failed to make
proper coordination, although the negotiating team made clear that it had
coordinated with the provincial as well as the local governments before
entering the area.
Militarized zone
Compostela Valley
remains the valley of death that it used to be. It is among the most
militarized zones in Southern
Mindanao. It has one Army brigade,
three battalions -- the 60th Infantry Battalion, the 72nd Infantry
Battalion and the 30th Infantry Battalion -- three companies,
including the 4th Scout Ranger Company. In a military report, the valley
ranks fifth in a list of the country’s insurgency hotspots.
Some of the gravest
human-rights violations documented by Karapatan-Southern Mindanao took
place in Compostela Valley, including the strafing of Lumad farmers in
Monkayo town in January this year. In that incident, members of the
military’s 36th Infantry Battalion finished off a 16-year-old
Lumad resident.
In May, Bayan Muna
leaders in Mabini town received threats from a group called Kahugpungan
Batok sa NPA Extortion (Kabane).
In April, a group of
Bayan Muna members was massacred in Laak. There were also cases of
indiscriminate firing on civilians in Montevista town in June, the torture
of civilians and suspected NPA guerrillas in April and November, and the
displacement of thousands of residents due to military operations.
In many parts of
Compostela Valley, the militarization goes on and the abuses continue,
largely ignored by the mainstream press and unknown to the public. And
with the recent approval by the government of large-scale mining by
foreign firms, Karapatan expects more abuses against civilians in the
mineral-rich province. Bulatlat
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