State Terrorism in Davao Region Claims More Innocent Lives

By Andres Rebana
Bulatlat.com

DAVAO CITY - While people in this city and in much of Southern Mindanao are preoccupied with how their leaders such as Mayor Rodrigo Duterte are supposedly trying to fight terrorism, terrorism - the kind that the State wreaks upon the poor - continues unabated.

The past weeks have witnessed how the State, through the military, has been terrorizing poor folk in the countryside and in this city in the name of fighting terrorism - a supreme paradox that seems lost on the region's leaders like Duterte, whose idea of justice is as skewed as it is flawed.

Since the bombings of the Davao International Airport in March and the Sasa wharf in April, the State has unleashed its full military might in this city and its environs, turning this area into a veritable police state, where soldiers and policemen would destroy the doors of Moros in the middle of the night and abduct family members. As of this week, six Moro men, some of them respected leaders in the community, have disappeared and have not been heard from since.

And now, the military in Southern Mindanao is at it again, embroiled in yet another case of human-rights violation.

At about noontime on April 25, elements of the 30th Special Forces - the same unit that has been accused of previous human-rights violations - fired upon a house in sitio Bisaya, barangay Mahan-ob, in Baganga town, Davao Oriental. According to the fact-finding report of the human-rights group Karapatan, inside the house was William Masimid, 27, a farmer, and his 65-year-old mother, Romana, who was weaving a basket. William's three-year-old son, Wilmer, was playing by the stairs. William and his child were killed.

Survivors and witnesses, Karapatan said, testified that the firing was "indiscriminate." On April 30, relatives of the victims filed a complaint before the Commission on Human Rights.

"The survivors are still grappling with the senseless killing of their family members since, according to them, the soldier who fired at the house could not have missed the sight of the toddler who was just playing by the stairs," said Ariel Casilao, the secretary-general of Karapatan in the Southern Mindanao region.

Military’s defense

The military defended itself by claiming that the deaths were the result of a "legitimate encounter."  It said William was a member of the New People's Army and that there were firearms recovered in the house.

Lt. Col. Agane Adriatico, spokesman of the military in the region, said Karapatan was quick to twist the truth about the incident and that the group should not be believed because it is an alleged supporter of the NPA.

But Karapatan said the military's claim that it was "legitimate encounter" was simply not true. "William was a civilian. His barangay captain has attested to this," Casilao said, adding that "there were no NPA guerrillas in the vicinity when the killing took place."

Casilao said relatives are also questioning why the military brought William's mother to the 30th Special Forces headquarters in Baganga after the shooting and why the bodies of William and Wilmer were "heavily guarded" by soldiers, preventing family members’ access to the corpses. William's wife, Dulcisima, according to Karapatan, requested that the bodies be embalmed but the military allegedly denied this request.

These incidents, Casilao said, "are indicative of the early whitewash attempts" by the military.

He also said that there have been instances in the past when the military behaved exactly this way in an attempt to cover up its culpabilities. "The incident is a strong case of gross human-rights violation that we should not just let pass this time given that Baganga has been a community long under the siege of these barbarous AFP operatives," Casilao said.

Hounded by atrocities

"The poor Mandaya farmers of Baganga have been continuously hounded by atrocities perpetrated by AFP elements in their ancestral land as indicated in the long record of human-rights violations documented by Karapatan in the area," he added.

Last year, the Pasaka Lumad Confederation also decried the military abuses in the area. Amelito Elio, the group's secretary-general, said the Mandayas are being forced to join the AFP's Citizens Armed Force Geographic Unit (Cafgu) to fight the NPA. In other parts of Southern Mindanao, the AFP has co-opted other Lumad groups to join the military in their fight against the NPA. The most infamous of these Lumad vigilantes is the Alamara, which was founded, financed and led by the military. The Alamara has been accused as well of gross human-rights violation.

"The military is forcing them to join the Cafgu. Otherwise they will be accused of being NPA members," Elio said. "We are being pitted against each other."

Elio said an explanation for the military's heavy presence in these Lumad provinces is the access given to logging concessions as well as tree plantations under the State's so-called Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA).

The plight of the Lumads in Davao Oriental and the rest of the Southern Mindanao provinces is replicated in other areas in Mindanao, particularly those where the Moros and the Lumads reside.

It has been the history of the island that the State uses the military to drive away these people from their ancestral land so business and landed interests, many of them foreign-owned, can gain access to their lands. The oppression this produced in turn gave birth to liberation movements such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, as well as the National Democratic Front, which is led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. The party's army, the New People's Army, operates in many of these areas, provide a counterpoint to the State's oftentimes vicious military machinery. Bulatlat.com

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