Bulatlat - The Philippines's alternative weekly magazine

Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Vol. IV, No. 43 November 28 - December 4, 2004 Quezon City, Philippines

Church bells

For four days beginning Nov. 13, responding to the tolling of church bells, thousands of residents and sympathizers of the striking workers came in droves every time police authorities came and threatened to disperse the picket line of the sugar farm workers. Thousands of other residents from 10 villages comprising the hacienda, ULWU leaders said in a statement on Nov. 13, would mass up at night at Gate 1 in anticipation of a violent dispersal.

Threats of dispersal placed the workers in high alert after Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) issued on Nov. 10 an Assumption of Jurisdiction (AJ). Sto. Tomas ordered the striking workers to return to work so the company could resume its operations in 24 hours. Apparently, the labor secretary’s order also directed the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to dismantle the barricades put up by the strikers and break up the strike.

That the dispersal order was to be executed by all means was not remote, ULWU president Rene Galang said in an interview with Bulatlat during the early stage of the strike. Since Day 1 of the strike the workers were already being driven out of their picket lines.

At around 6 p.m. on Nov. 6, policemen used tear gas and water cannons to drive the strikers out of the CAT gate. Another dispersal took place at the crack of dawn the following day where at least 80 people including children and the elderly were hurt.

Farm workers interviewed by Bulatlat said tension rose on Nov. 15 as the 6,000 strikers were reinforced by 9,000 residents from the hacienda’s 10 barangays (villages) at Gate 1. They stood their ground as about 300 policemen came and in formation tried to break the strikers’ ranks.

To ease the tension, about 10 policewomen deployed themselves at the police front line. This prompted about 50 women strikers to also take the frontline to face the policewomen. At the right side of the ground, male strikers stood across the male policemen.

The police were armed with truncheons and shields while the hacienda workers had their own truncheons made of pieces of wood, said Rene Tua, a sugar mill worker and adviser of the CAT labor union (or Catlu).

Negotiation

Sensing they were outnumbered, the police were forced to negotiate with the strike leaders, Tua said. Tulakan lang (just pushing and shoving). No coming into blows, tear gas or water cannon.

The streamer says it all: "Enough! We are hungry!"

Photo by Dabet Castañeda

At the count of three, Tua said, the combined forces of the plantation and sugar mill workers pushed the entire police contingent. Seemingly winning the battle at this point, Tua said, the workers became jubilant, others even laughing and jumping until the police, humiliated by their setback, started hitting the strikers with their truncheons.

In the scuffle, the workers confiscated five police shields. But they returned the shields after the police said they will be paying for them if they got lost, Tua said.

A number of strikers were hurt, among them Catlu president Ricardo Ramos who was hit on the head.

But Tua said the strikers held their ground until the police were forced to leave before sunset.

Upon the intervention of Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, three Catlu leaders (including Tua) and two others from ULWU traveled to Makati City in Metro Manila the following for a 10 a.m. meeting with Jose Cojuangco, Jr. in his mansion.

In a press conference last Nov. 18, Ocampo related how Cojuangco – brother of former President Aquino - reacted to his request for dialogue. “Kung ayaw ko nang papasukin sa bahay ko, bakit magpupumilit pa?” (If I do not want to accept someone in my home, why would he insist?). Ocampo replied, “Baka may karapatan din sila” (Maybe, he also has a right).

Tua said, “Ayaw kaming kausapin. Gusto si Ka Satur lang. Lumabas na kami.” (They did not want to talk to us. They only wanted Ka Satur. So we walked out.)

Tua said further, “Sabi niya (Peping), may AJ na ang DoLE” (Peping said the DoLE had issued an AJ). It was at this point, he said, that he feared something big was going to happen. He, along with the other union leaders, went back to Tarlac in haste.

True enough, while the Makati meeting was ongoing about 300 Army soldiers aboard 19 military trucks slipped through the east gate of the hacienda.

Final dispersal try

Emil Paragas, Karapatan Tarlac coordinator, was at the picket line outside Gate 1 to observe the strike. He related the full account of the Nov. 16 massacre.

Another major dispersal was at work, Paragas recalled, this time with the police reinforced by soldiers from the Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) based at Camp Aquino which is just across the highway overlooking the hacienda. Policemen were at the frontline of the dispersal formation, he said. Behind them were agents of Nolcom. Three fire trucks and an armored personnel carrier (APC) were positioned inside Gate 1.

At 3:10 p.m., the police began using water cannons to drive away the protesters. A few minutes later, tear gas filled the air. Paragas said there were more than 200 canisters of tear gas thrown at the workers.

But the strikers were ready, Flor Sibayan, who was among them, recalled. They brought pails of water from nearby Balite village and used these to catch the tear gas canisters. Those that hit the ground were immediately covered with wet cloths and were spilled with water. “Para lang kaming nanghuhuli ng daga” (It was like we were catching mice), is how Sibayan described the incident.

The workers, Paragas said, were determined to maintain the picket line. “Bumabalik ang mga manggagawa kapag humuhupa na ang epekto ng tear gas” (Workers would return to the picket line every time the effect of the tear gas weakens).

Then, Paragas continued, thrice the APC rammed into the gate. Paragas said he heard workers shout, “Nagkasahan na” (Rifles were cocked).

One of the missing victims
Photo courtesy of Tudla

Then, the shooting began. Paragas said he saw soldiers armed with long rifles position themselves on the open field at the right side of the sugar mill and at the left side of the gate. Gunshots also came from the gate, he said. There is a high probability, he said, that other soldiers positioned at the left side of the sugar mill used silencers.

Jun David, one of those killed, was hit from the left side of the CAT, he said. “Katabi ko siya nang tamaan siya ng bala. Wala siyang armas.” (He was beside me when he was hit. He was unarmed.) Soldiers gave chase as striking workers ran for safety toward the nearest barangay.

All told, the volley of gunfire lasted for two minutes, Paragas said. The Karapatan fact-finding mission later found spent shells of M-14 and M-16 rifles. Karapatan also said the soldiers used a 60-cal. machine gun.

The shooting killed seven union members and residents of Hacienda Luisita. They were David, Jhaivie Basilio, Jesus Laza, Jessie Valdez, Juancho Sanchez, Adriano Caballero Jr. and Jaime Pastidio.

Unaccounted for

Six more were reportedly killed but their bodies have yet to be found. Union officers said they could not identify them because they were sacadas (seasonal plantation workers) who came from different provinces of Visayas and Luzon.

Tudla, an independent audio-visual group, captured a video of a man who was shot in the back. This man has not been accounted for as of press time.

One witness, a woman sugar farm worker from Lourdes village, also related the incident to Bulatlat. “Nagtatago ako sa kanal. Nakita ko yung mama pumulot ng bato. Binaril siya. May mga nagsakay sa kanya sa tricycle. Hindi na namin alam nasaan na siya” (I was hiding in a canal. I saw a man picking up a stone. He was shot. We do not know where he was taken.), she said.

Some of those who died could have lived had they been allowed to be brought directly to the Tarlac provincial hospital. But soldiers and policemen ordered them at gunpoint to take a longer route – a 12-km ride from Gate 1 to the hospital’s emergency room.

Sibayan said one of the fatalities, Juancho Sanchez, was still alive when he was brought to the hospital. But he lost a lot of blood. Sanchez’s feet were run over by the APC. Unable to rise, he lost consciousness when a soldier hit him on the face. Sibayan, who herself was hit in the left shoulder, said she could still hear Sanchez breathing while lying beside her in the hospital bed. Sanchez succumbed to his wounds that night.

Witness points to where she was hiding when she witnessed how one of the victims was hit

Photo by Dabet Castañeda

About 72 wounded strikers soaked in their own blood as they were hurled into the Emergency Room; 34 of them sustained gunshot wounds.

In a press conference held two days later in Quezon City, Catlu lawyer Noel Neri said that the military prevented families of victims from immediately recovering their dead.

Aside from the dead and wounded, 111 others, including 16 women and two minors, were arrested and charged with physical assault, resisting persons in authority and malicious mischief. Neri said most of those arrested were actually sacadas from Negros, Batangas and other provinces who were picked up by the military from their bunkhouse.

Accounts also told of soldiers mowing down the father of a baby who died of asphyxiation resulting from the tear gas attack; of Basilio who was reportedly strangled and hanged in the barbed wire at Gate 1 before he was shot dead.

Testimonies by scores of many eyewitnesses and the victims themselves, video shots and still photos indicate that the protesters were unarmed and that some gunshots came from snipers positioned in the open field to the right facing the sugar mill and on top of the reservoir farther back, and from the soldiers near the entrance of Gate 1.

Anakpawis Rep. Rafael Mariano, who was one of those who went to investigate the massacre on Nov. 17, said he and his group were on their way to the hacienda when 11 truckloads of soldiers rumbled out of the area toward Camp Aquino.

Mariano said he even talked to Col. Romeo Reyes of Nolcom. In their brief talk, Reyes admitted to Mariano that he and his men arrived at the picket line at 2 p.m. of Nov. 16. The colonel also said there were 271 of them along with two APCs.

Mariano would say later, “Sila ay naroon nang maganap ang pamamaslang”(They [military] were there when the killings occurred).

“Deliberate and premeditated”

In a Nov. 23 statement, Galang accused the Cojuangcos and the military and police dispersal teams of a “deliberate and premeditated intent…to kill sugar mill and farm workers on strike.” He also said the killings were committed with the “full consent and awareness of the Arroyo administration and DoLE.”

Meanwhile, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, a retired four-star general who occupied key government positions during the presidency of Aquino, said the New People's Army was involved in the Nov. 16 killings.

During a meeting at the Cojuangco residence attended by city and barangay officials Nov. 18, Rep. Benigno Aquino III's commented that NPA rebels may have possibly infiltrated the strikers.

In another statement released to the media, the Cojuangco family alleged that “outside forces are influencing the situation, resorting to intimidation of non-striking workers and even to the destruction of millions of pesos worth of crops.”

However, Barangay chairman Rodel Galang of Barangay Balete, Tarlac City countered that he knows all the people who converged at Gate 1 on Nov. 16. All were unarmed, he said, adding that there are no NPA men in his barangay or elsewhere in the picket site at the time of the shooting.

In a statement sent through email, Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, spokesperson of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), said that the NPA had no participation in the Nov. 16 Hacienda Luisita demonstration.

Rosal added that the NPA had no hand in the mobilization of thousands of peasants supporting the workers' strike at CAT. “The NPA is careful not to step within the bounds of the people's legal struggle precisely to prevent reactionaries from using this to justify the use of armed means to quell the people's legitimate unarmed struggles,” he said.

On the contrary, striking workers reported seeing suspected military infiltrators in their ranks. During the shooting, Tua said, a plainclothesman was pointing at him and the other union leaders, apparently as to be shot or arrested. During the funeral march of the massacre victims on Nov. 21, mourners caught a suspected agent of Nolcom taking pictures. “Nahuli namin kasi hindi siya marunong gumamit ng kamera. Nang tanungin siya, pang-souvenir lang daw” (We caught him because he doesn’t know how to use the camera. When our colleagues asked him, he said it’s just for souvenir), he said.

Struggle continues

The night after the massacre, Tua said about 80 of the plantation and sugar workers returned to the picket line. “Naisip namin baka dukutin na lang kami” (We were thinking we could just be abducted). The following morning, the number of people at the picket line swelled with the return of other union members and their families.

The Nov. 21 funeral march was attended by more than 6,000 people. At the head of the march-rally was a streamer that read “Tuloy ang laban! Tuloy ang welga!” (The struggle continues. The strike goes on.) Bulatlat

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