The red blood depicted in Zoluaga’s piece snakingly flows like the ancestral rivers in Tumandok lands. The winding ripples twined below the navels of these figures as if tugging them to stay immobile. But hear no petty cavilings from their travails, these are steadfast clan leaders who are vigorously marching along the correct line-of-path.
12th Infantry Battalion-Philippine Army (12IBPA) troopers and the Philippine National Police in Western Visayas swooped down on Tumandok communities in Calinog in Iloilo and Tapaz in Capiz and killed nine civilians in a Synchronized Enhanced Management of Police Operation (SEMPO).
“We continue to condemn the AFP-PNP’s modus operandi of hostaging remains and burying under lies the truth about what really happened to these five civilians,” Karapatan ST said.
“Although it is so close to Christmas, [202nd Infantry Bridgade commander] Alex Rillera is still in the business of stealing corpses.”
That the explicitly murderous rhetoric of, and the culture of impunity bred by Duterte has enabled this atrocity, is a glaring fact of our current life. From injunctions like “… kaunting pagkakamali lang barilin mo na,” to promises that no policemen would ever go to jail, everything that Duterte has been saying and doing has provided the very conditions for these atrocities to emerge and fester.
Dr. Sancelan, Guihulngan’s city health officer and head of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), was included in the hitlist circulated by anti-communist vigilante group Kagubak last year.
Carlito Badion, known for his indubitable courage, was an effective urban poor leader because he knew poverty like the palm of his hand.
Forensic pathology expert Raquel Fortun, who examined Randall Echanis’s remains, said, “He was made to suffer before he was killed.”
Duterte publicly labeled the communists as the number one threat to national security in his speech on June 22. He also declared communists as terrorists on July 8. Are these not treated as orders from the Armed Forces of the Philippines commander-in-chief? Are these statements aiming to justify the attacks on so-called communist-terrorists?
Zara, who loved the sea, who loved to eat seafood and their local rice cake dipped in chocolate sauce, who worked tirelessly and selflessly, was murdered in one rainy evening. Yet, her fire burns eternal.
By DEE AYROSO