could be on that special day.  But May 9 was not just a simple Mother’s Day for Adelina.  For a very painful reason, she was grieving.  Two days earlier, on May 7, indiscriminate firing by soldiers toward their home killed her 6-year old special child and her 13-year-old daughter. She cries for justice.

By Dabet Castañeda
Bulatlat.com

“Hustisya para sa mga anak ko!” (Justice for my children!). Adelina Golloso, 48, wailed as the bodies of her two children, Maylene and Raymund, were laid to rest at Bulan town’s cemetery in Sorsogon, a province south of Manila, May 13.

Her husband, an ex-village chief, was rather subdued.  “Ubos na ang luha ko” (My tears have dried up), he said. 

Human rights workers who were in Bulan said about 1,500 of the Gollosos’ friends and relatives came to the funeral.  “Galit ang mga tao (The people were angry),” said Agnes Pacres, staff of the Bicol chapter of the human rights alliance Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights).

Dark afternoon

It was a dusky afternoon on May 7, Friday, when the tragedy struck. Adelina left her four children at home in barangay (village) Recto at about 2:35 p.m. as she headed for the village center, about 200 meters away, the Karapatan investigation team said in a report.

Sisters Melody, 18, and Maylene, 13, were cooking santan (a sweet coconut spread) while their younger brothers Resty, 9, and Raymund, 6, a special child, were playing outside.

Thirty minutes later, Karapatan said, the Golloso siblings were jolted by a loud burst of gunfire. The two boys hurried inside the house and went right straight into their parents’ bedroom. 

Narrating the incident to the investigation team, Melody said: “After a few minutes the firing stopped but when the soldiers fired again, I saw Maylene and Raymund lying on the bed.  They were bleeding.”

Raymund was hit in the head and lay motionless.  “He was calling our mother,” Melody recalled. Maylene was bleeding profusely.  She was also hit in the head, with the left side of her face shattered.  

Realizing that she could do nothing, Melody took Resty’s hand and ran to the house of a certain Vilma, a relative. On their way to the house, which was only 100 meters away, Melody heard somebody among the soldiers say, “ Pasukin natin ang bahay, baka may buhay pa” (Let’s enter the house, there may be survivors). 

Terrified mother

Adelina, on the other hand, told the human rights investigators that she saw soldiers from the 2nd Infantry Battalion and the 902nd Infantry Brigade of the 9th Infantry Division of the Philippine Army at the village hall and at the house of the village chief. With them, she said, was Cesar Loares, a member of the Citizen’s Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) and resident of barangay Quirino, also in Bulan.

Ten minutes later, she heard gunfire.  “Agoy! Dyos ko ang balay ko!” (Oh my god, my house!), she shouted upon realizing that her house was being strafed. 

She ran toward her house, the report said. Reaching home, she saw seven soldiers with three of them hiding behind coconut trees and the rest crawling on the ground.

One of the soldiers asked who she was. Adelina shouted she owned the house the soldiers were firing at and that her children were inside.

“Ma…”

Inside the house, Adelina saw her two children, Maylene and Raymund, bathed in blood.  “Ma…,” the dying Raymund begged his mother.  She immediately ran outside their house to ask for help. 

Seeing some soldiers still in their backyard, she shouted for help.  “Humihinga pa ang isang anak ko!” (My other child is still breathing!). The soldiers just walked away.

Karapatan said that Maylene died on the spot while Raymund succumbed to his wounds a few minutes after the soldiers left.

Encounter?

The soldiers, Karapatan said, later went to ask the village chief to certify that what happened was a shoot-out with New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas near the Golloso house and that it was the guerrillas who killed the two children. 

“Pinirmahan na nung barangay kapitan dahil sa takot sa mga sundalo” (The village chief signed the certification because he was frightened by the soldiers), said Pacres.

But Adelina angrily denied the soldiers’ claim. “Walang NPA sa bahay namin.  Yung apat na anak ko lang ang nandun” (There were no NPA guerrillas in our house. Only my four kids were inside), she said.

Battered issue

The Recto incident is one of recent countless cases where soldiers kill civilians while feigning innocence claiming that the NPA guerrillas were the perpetrators, Karapatan said.

On April 16 last year, nine civilians – among them four children and a pregnant woman - were massacred by alleged members of the 19th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army.  But 2nd Lt. Eddie Abolencia, community relations officer of the 19th IBPA said it was an encounter with the NPA. 

Since 2001 under the Macapagal-Arroyo administration, Karapatan said, there have been 3,044 cases of human rights violations in which 278 were killed.  Among those killed were 13 human rights workers. 

Documents from fact-finding missions show that the perpetrators in these cases were either military or paramilitary men. Others were private goons of warlords and politicians, the renegade Revolutionary Proletarian Army – Alex Boncayao Brigade (RPA-ABB) which operates mainly in the Visayas, and groups of military-backed rebel returnees who operate in Mindoro island. 

In a round table discussion with the press held by Bulatlat.com May 18, Girlie Padilla, acting secretary general of the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace (EMJP), said “These violations are done with impunity.  In our records, no perpetrator has been punished by the government or the military court.”

“Hinahayaan lang ni pangulong Arroyo na ganun ang gawin sa masa” (President Arroyo allows these happen to the masses), Padilla added.

Padilla notes that under the Arroyo regime, human rights has always been a “battered issue” which was highlighted by the recent bloody election. In fact, the Philippine National Police reported nearly 200 deaths since the campaign for the 2004 elections began mid-February.

Karapatan has a higher figure: 336 persons slain during the same period. Among those killed were 11 members of progressive party-list groups. 

Darker future

As far as human rights issues are concerned, Padilla said that with the miserable human rights record that Arroyo holds, another six-year term for her would only mean a darker future for the Filipino people. 

Padilla warned specifically that the passing of the Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB) will legitimize the perpetration of human rights violations especially against the masses and members of progressive legal organizations.

“Kung susuriin ang mga operasyon ng militar, makikita natin na kapag pumunta sila sa isang baryo, hindi lang NPA ang hinahanap nila.  Mas ang pinupuruhan pa nga nila ay ang masa na pinaghihinalaan nilang sumusuporta sa mga NPA at ang mga kilalang myembro ng mga militanteng organisasyon sa mga baryo,” Padilla said. 

In a paper distributed by the multi-sectoral group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) on April 2003, it said the anti-terrorism bill aims to fight “terrorism” at the expense of civil liberties.   The group named some constitutionally-guaranteed rights that the ATB will violate once it is passed into a law: the right to free speech, to privacy, and to liberty; freedom against unreasonable searches and seizures; and the guarantee of the presumption of innocence, due process and equal protection of the law.

The 12th Congress failed to pass the ATB into law due to the opposition of progressive and pro-human rights legislators led by the party-list group Bayan Muna (People First). 

But Padilla said their group worries that the bill might pass its second reading when Congress opens in July.  “They (the authors of the bill) will intensify their moves to make sure that the anti-terror bill is made into a law so the perpetrators will be free to commit violations against the people, “ she said.  Bulatlat.com

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