BY RYAN B. LACHICA
Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 13 May 6- 12, 2007

BACOLOD CITY – The rampant political killings, disappearances and harassment of leaders and organuzers of progressive groups, which are allegedly being committed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) bring back memories of the Martial Law era – the period when tyranny reigned in the country.

This region, Western Visayas, has not been spared. In Panay and Negros islands, several cases of enforced disappearances and tales of harassment had been documented by people’s organizations. These, however, remain unsolved.

Recent attacks

In Iloilo, the whereabouts of Leonilo Arado, regional chairperson of Bayan-Panay and Coordinator of militant party-list Anakpawis (Toiling Masses), and Ma. Luisa Posa-Dominado, officer of the Samahan nga mga Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Para sa Amnestiya (SELDA-Panay), who were abducted after their vehicle was ambushed by unidentified armed men the night of April 12 remain unknown.

Surviving the ambush-slay attempt, Jose Ely “Liboy” Garachico, officer of Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights)-Panay told investigators that they were on their way home from San Jose, Antique when the incident took place. The three had just attended the Anakpawis regional assembly.

Garachico said they noticed a green Mitsubishi van tailing them from Guimbal town, 24 kms. south of Iloilo City. Garachico, who was driving, said he tried to outrun the van but it overtook them at Barangay (village) Parara, Tigbauan, Iloilo and cut their path.

Gararicho, who is confined at the Iloilo Doctors Hospital, said that their black Mitsubishi L200 pick-up truck with plate number FEA-789 was blocked by the green Mitsubishi van with plate number FVF-463 at Brgy. Cabanbanan, around 7 kms. from Iloilo City, 9:30 p.m. last April 12.

Passengers of the green Mitsubishi van fired at them, Garachico said. He was hit in the neck, after which he was ordered to alight while his companions were transferred to the van. The attackers left him and sped off with their pick up truck and the van bringing with them his two companions.

Their pick-up truck was found burned at a sugarcane field at dawn of April 13 in Janiuay town, 33 kms. northwest of Iloilo City or 30 kms. from where the victims were waylaid.

Insp. Efren Nimbra, Janiuay police chief, said residents of Barangay Guadalupe reported to the police that they saw the van in flames shortly after hearing a loud explosion between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.

Committed activists

Ma. Luisa Posa-Dominado was a student leader in Iloilo during pre-martial days. She went underground when martial law was declared.

According to her comrades, at 18 years old she was already committed to the struggle to end the dictatorship and to fight for a better life for the majority of our people.

She had been in and out of detention centers in Iloilo, Cebu and Ipil, several times: the first was in 1973 and the last was during the Aquino administration. She was called by government authorities as “Kumander Posa.” She twice escaped detention centers in Iloilo.

She resumed schooling at the University of the Philippiones (UP) in Iloilo, in the 1990s, and finished a degree in Political Science while attending to her children. Since then she has devoted much of her life to working for the freedom of political detainees and helping thecause-oriented movement in Iloilo and other provinces in Panay.

Her friends said that Luing, as she is fondly called by friends, has been in the forefront of organizing former political detainees in Iloilo and Panay through SELDA and was one of those who successfully lobbied before the city government for the construction, in one of Iloilo City’s plazas, of a memorial listing the names of Martial Law victims of killings and forced disappearances.

Garachico is another veteran figure in Panay insofar as human rights activism is concerned. According to his kin and comrades, it was during his seminary days that he first came to know about the realities of oppression and repression. When he left the seminary he devoted his life to working for the defense and promotion of the rights of the basic sectors.

Arado is the youngest of the three. He hailed from a poor peasant family in Agusan del Sur. He joined the Carmelites religious formation in the late 1980s. It was during his formation in Agusan, and later in Negros and Cebu, where he learned the social teachings of the Church, and was awakened more during his community immersions, witnessing the miserable lives and persistent struggles of the urban poor, poor farmers and sugar workers.

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