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Commentary:
Piñol's Problematic `Truth'

North Cotabato Gov. Manny Piñol cited an alleged rebel's diary to prove that what happened last April 5 in Arakan Valley was a “legitimate encounter,” not a massacre. Unfortunately, the governor's conclusion is problematic.

By CARLOS H. CONDE
Bulatlat.com/MindaNews

That was quite a spectacle North Cotabato Gov. Manny Piñol showed last Wednesday. He went out of his way to support the military by presenting to the media weapons and documents that he claimed were recovered from the remains of Benjaline “Beng” Hernandez and three other alleged communists after a “military encounter” last April 5 in Arakan Valley. In his usual smug and self-righteous manner, Piñol, whose disdain for Karapatan and other human-rights group is never a secret, proclaimed that the military’s version of the Arakan Valley killings was the “truth.”

He cited Hernandez’s supposed diary as proof that Hernandez was, indeed, a New People’s Army guerrilla and that the incident was a “legitimate encounter,” not a massacre.

Unfortunately, Piñol’s conclusion is problematic. And I am not just talking about the fact that nobody, least of all experts on handwriting and such, has conclusively proved that the diary was Hernandez’s. Ditto the firearms supposedly recovered from the victims. Knowing the military’s history of fabricating and planting evidence, anything is possible. Coupled with its earnest effort to demolish the credibility of human rights groups such as Karapatan, I won’t be surprised if the military will do the most stupid of things.

Nor am I talking about the fact that Piñol, just to serve his and the military’s interests, would exploit - again, granting that the diary was Hernandez’s - a dead person’s personal secrets for propaganda purposes.

Nor the fact that some witnesses have said that the Cafgus who killed the victims boasted about their act ("How the women cried!" said one of the paramilitary men, according to a witness). Nor the fact that a police officer said residents told him Hernandez did not have any weapons with her.

I am talking about the fact that Piñol’s latest stunt did not prove anything. I am talking about the fact that whether or not Hernandez was an NPA guerrilla is not, and was never, the issue. The issue has always been the manner in which she and the other victims died, which indicates serious violations of the human rights and international humanitarian laws.

Let’s grant for a second that Hernandez was an NPA guerrilla. That does not explain away the apparent torture marks on her body. Her head, according to preliminary examinations of the body, was smashed -- not by a bullet but by a blunt object. If it were a bullet, the skull would have splintered away. Hernandez’s injury to the head, according to a doctor who saw it, looked as though the skull had been bashed in.

Nor her being, hypothetically, an NPA, explain away what looked like powder burns on the bullet wounds in her body, which can only indicate one thing: that she was shot at close range.

If verified, these factors indicate violations of the rules of engagement – just as the circumstances of the deaths of the so-called Mawab Four (named after two civilians and two NPA cadres killed by soldiers), a case Karapatan has also been working on, indicate foul play.

Which is why if Piñol wants to go to the bottom of this case, he should stop issuing self-serving remarks and pressure instead the National Bureau of Investigation to release to the public the results of the autopsy it did on Hernandez. The NBI in Region 11 has balked at the idea, saying that it would wait for the case against the military to be filed first. That, to me, is bull---. If the NBI was so quick in releasing its autopsies on Nida Blanca and Rico Yan, I don’t see why it cannot do the same in this case. That it does not, only raises suspicion of a cover-up.

The military’s and Piñol’s use of the NPA line is devious because it tends to gloss over the circumstances of Hernandez’s death, which is very consistent with the similar violence being inflicted by the military upon civilians and progressives not only in Southern Mindanao but nationwide as well.

As far as the military is concerned, exploiting the alleged NPA links of victims of human rights violations somehow justifies the intensifying militarization in the countryside, the serious violations of human rights committed by soldiers, and the increasing disregard for the safety and welfare of civilians. The latter was proven in the case of the raid by the AFP of an alleged NPA wedding in Marilog District recently, where one survivor said that the soldiers fired on the victims despite knowing that there were children in the line of fire.

More insidiously, by routinely labeling as NPA members those the military victimizes, the AFP and the likes of Piñol are actually waging a psy-war operation not only against progressives, political dissenters and activists but also against the general public. This discourages dissent because those who have legitimate issues against the government end up terrorized, whereupon those in power like Piñol can pretty much do as they please, human rights and civil liberties be damned. Ultimately, this is the context of the deaths of Beng Hernandez and the countless other activists forever silenced by state-sponsored terrorism. Bulatlat.com

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