Kagimungan, a peasant organization in Cagayan province has been reaping gains for the peasantry, as it wages agrarian struggle and delivers agricultural support services. Ironically, these gains have to be paid for in blood, with five of their leaders killed and many other officials and members attacked by military in the villages.

BY DEE AYROSO
Bulatlat

“Down with Kagimungan,” the placard says

The road leading to Bagunot village in Baggao town (some 500 km north of Manila) is lined with smear placards against a local militant peasant organization. “Kagimungan, intay rebekken”  (Down with Kagimungan) and “Kagimungan, CPP-NPA front” screamed the signs painted on sacks and nailed on electric posts. Kagimungan (Alyansa Dagiti Mannalon iti Cagayan or Alliance of Peasants in Cagayan), has gained prominence in the Cagayan Valley region for its campaign on agrarian issues, with relative success in lowering usury rates. Ironically, five of its leaders have been killed by suspected soldiers in the past five months.

The latest victims were Arthuro Orpilla, 54 and Dionisio Battad, 55, of Bagunot village. The two went to the company detachment of the Philippine Army’s 17^th Infantry Battalion in Zone 1 in the village on March 27, and were later found dead in Lallo, a town further up north in the province.

“Bente-siete nga saksak!” (Twenty-seven stab wounds!) Arthuro’s widow Hilda wailed as she cried on the shoulder of a peasant leader who arrived at the wake of her husband.  “What did he do to deserve this?” she cried in Ilocano.

Arthuro’s body was found March 28, inside a sack loaded with big rocks at the bank of the Cagayan River under the Magapit bridge in Lallo. The body bore a deep stab wound on the left shoulder, multiple stab wounds along the waist, and what appeared to be a gunshot wound at the lower back, according to a fact-finding team organized by Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights).

Dionisio’s decomposing body was recovered April 3 also under the Magapit Bridge, fished out of the river by villagers. Dionisio’s left eye and right ear were missing, and so was the little finger on his left hand. His wrists and ankles bore tie marks. 

The victims’ families found out about the recovery of the bodies only on April 4.

Suspects

Hilda told the Karapatan fact-finding team that at about 4 p.m. of March 27, Dionisio went to their house and asked Arthuro to accompany him to the army camp. Dionisio had been required to report to a certain Sergeant Orpilla at the detachment twice a day, at 8 am and 4 pm, said his widow, Natividad. 

According to Hilda, Arthuro, also a village councilor, was being forced to report to the camp to undergo training of the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU). A villager who requested anonymity said the military required all village officials to be a CAFGU member. A relative of Arthuro said he had requested the Army to spare him from being a CAFGU member because he couldn’t keep up with the strenuous physical training, but the Army refused to let him go.  

Two detachments of the 17^th IB had been in the village since last year. Curfew is being implemented from 9 pm to 5 am, and soldiers and CAFGU members conduct roving operations at night, supposedly, as part of keeping peace and order in the village.

“Who else would be able to do this to them? They have been harassed by the soldiers because they were activists in the community. And the soldiers are the only ones who have guns here,” said a Kagimungan member who asked not to be named.

Agrarian struggles

Arthuro is the village project coordinator of Kagimungan, and was in charge of the agricultural machines acquired through funding from the party-list groups Bayan Muna (People First) and Anakpawis(Toiling Masses).  Bayan Muna had funded agricultural projects providing Bagunot village and nearby communities with a mini rice mill, palay dryer, water pump and thresher.  Anakpawis had funded a water system artesian well.

A villager said that these projects have provided the peasant communities an alternative to the traders.   Rice millers charge P2 ($0.04, based on an exchange rate of P47.905 per US dollar) to mill a kilo of palay, while Kagimungan’s mini-rice mill charge half the price, at P1 ($0.02) per kilo.

In the past years, Kagimungan had waged several other campaigns on agrarian issues. A particularly successful campaign had lowered usury rates in several Cagayan towns, from 40 percent to 13 percent, achieved through persistent negotiations with traders. 

Kagimungan had also set up a community radio station at the Baggao town proper in June last year. Barely a month after it aired, the station was raided and razed to the ground by armed men suspected to be soldiers.

Dionisio’s widow Natividad recalled one time when she accompanied Dionisio at the camp, a 17^th IB officer tried to convince them that Kagimungan is not good, that it is a front of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA). The couple told the officer that contrary to his claim, Kagimungan had helped ease the debts of the peasants in Cagayan.

Natividad said that she never allowed her husband to report to the camp alone, because Dionisio was fearful for his life. The army officer kept telling him that he was the one who replaced Joey Javier, she said.

Five martyrs

In late 2006, three peasant leaders were slain in a month’s time in Cagayan province.

On Nov. 11, 2006, Joey Javier, 44, chair of Kagimungan, was shot dead at the Bagunot bridge in Baggao, 100 meters from the company camp of the 17^th IB which is near the river. 

In 2003, Javier and three other peasant leaders survived a hacking attack by soldiers of the 41^st IB stationed in Baggao and led by Capt. George Domingo.  Javier’s left arm was severely injured.  The leaders charged the soldiers with frustrated murder but a local court acquitted the soldiers.

Two weeks after Javier was killed on Nov. 27, his successor in the organization Anthony Licyayo, 38, was found dead with a gunshot wound in the head in his corn field in Cabiroan village, Gonzaga town. His body was found at noon, with his one-year-old daughter, sleeping on his chest and bathed in his blood.  Licyayo went out at 8 a.m. that day to check on his crops, carrying his daughter in a blanket slung on his shoulder.  The child was unhurt.   

On Dec. 13, Nelson Asucena, 19, a Sangguniang Kabataan (Youth Council) leader and a member of Anakbayan was shot dead in front of his house in San Juan village, Rizal town by five soldiers led by 2^nd Lt. Marcelo Pascua of the 21^st IB, based in Bural village in Rizal. The soldiers awoke the Asucena family at 10:30 pm and asked for coffee. Pascua then asked Nelson to come out and bring them cold water, and later to put away the glasses. As Nelson collected the glasses, the soldiers fired at him.

Two days later on Dec. 15, Roque France, 64, a member of Kagimungan and the Dagup Igorot Association, survived a shooting attack in front of his house in Cabiroan, Gonzaga town. France was shot in the leg.

According to the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP or Philippine Peasant Movement), other peasant leaders in Cagayan were also being surveilled by the military, namely Pasciano Payay, Albert Himmiwat and Vilma Mangili.

Isabelo Adviento, Kagimungan adviser said, that he was also being monitored by the military. In 2003, he was with Joey Javier when they were attacked by soldiers in Baggao. Adviento said that the attacks create fear among the peasant communities, and only worsens their impoverished situation. The military operations and offensives do not help solve the problems of the peasantry, he said

“Hindi kami titigil hangga’t di mababago ang sistema. Hindi kami titigil na ipagtanggol at ipaglaban ang karapatan ng inaapi, at ang mga natamo naming tagumpay” (We will not stop until the system is changed.  We will not stop in defending the rights of the exploited, and in protecting the gains we have achieved), he said. Bulatlat

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