Militias, AFP spawn de facto Mindanao ML

From the Daily Tribune (Sep 6): Militias, AFP spawn de facto Mindanao ML

A virtual martial law (ML), which President Aquino may have been responsible for or at least tolerated, exists in Southern Mindanao as proven by the recent killings of indigenous Lumads, a militant lawmaker and human rights advocates, said.

Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate, at a media forum yesterday in Quezon City, said Aquino seems to ignore the situation where officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and certain paramilitary groups perpetuate militaristic fear on indigenous peoples (IPs).

Zarate has been looking into the cases of forced evacuations involving thousands of Lumads.

“President Aquino, whose family experienced the harshness of martial law, is careless regarding this phenomenon in Mindanao where IPs are victimized by a virtual martial law as they experience horrifying crimes, intimidations and threats from the AFP that backs paramilitary activities in a divide and conquer fashion,” Zarate said.

Among the cases Zarate cited is a “wreckless and inhumane” event where members of the community, including a 12 year old girl, witnessed actual killing before them.
Sheina Campos, the 12 year old girl who was present in the said media forum, togethee with five other individuals saw how paramilitary men shot to death her father Dionel Campos in Diatagon village in Lianga, Surigao del Sur on September 1.

Speaking in behalf of Sheina, who can roughly speak English or Tagalog plus the emotional trauma that bars her from sharing what she saw, was Eufemia Cullamat, a woman leader of the Malahutayong Pakigbisog Alang sa Sumusunod (MAPASU) and is a witness to the said killing.

“We were preparing to bury a deceased elder that morning. The day before (Sept. 1), a small number of soldiers who introduced themselves as members of the 75th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army asked us to cooperate for an investigation of which we respectfully declined because we were mourning then. They agreed and we thought that that was it. Little did we know that paramilitary men were already spying on us since midnight,” Cullamat said.

“Dionel and Jovillo Sinzo, another MAPSU leader, were staying at the house (of Josephine Pagalan). At around 4 a.m. soldiers and their paramilitary escorts went house to house and when they saw Dionel and Jovi they ordered them to sit at the foot of the stairs. They also grabbed Belen Itallo, who is crippled by polio since birth, near Dionel and Jovillo. They kicked her,” Cullamat narrated.

“The Armed men ordered them to sit beside each other while telling others who were there to ‘drop’. They shot Dionel, whose head was blown off, and Jovillo dead,” Cullamat said.

Cullamat identified brothers Bobby and Loloy Tejero, who were Lumads recruited by a paramilitary group allegedly “armed by the AFP” and are actually Campos’ relatives, as the shooters.

On the same morning, Emerito Samacara, Executive Director of the Lumad school Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV), was also found dead in one of the classrooms in the said school compound. His throat was slit open from ear to ear.

Samacara’s death was also attributed to paramilitary groups accordingly backed by the military who allegedly provided arms.

According to rights group Karapatan, the military recruits Lumads into paramilitary units called Magahat, Bacani, and Marcos Bocales to “fuel brother-to-brother feuds” by giving them arms and cash.

“Paramilitary recruitment is not new. It was done during the martial law era in the guise of private armies of politicians. The same thing also happned during the regime of (President Cory Aquino) where paramilitaries appeared as fanatic vigilante groups,” he said.

“Now, the paramilitary forces within the Lumad community are backed by the AFP through the influence, we believe, of mining companies,” Karapatan secretary-general Cristina Palabay told the Daily Tribune.

Mining firms after Lumad lands

Mining companies, since 1994, have been expressing interest in investing on particular Lumad territories.

Meanwhile, Liberal Party (LP) ally Rep. Nancy Catamco, together with another group of Lumads in a separate media forum last Thursday, said that the Lumad evacuees which include Campos and the two other victims who are being hosted by ecumenical Christian churches are being “influenced and manipulated” by left-leaning groups linked to the communist New People’s Army (NPA).

The NPA, true enough on their website, claimed that the largest base of the Maoist insurgents are operating in the Northern and Southern Mindanao regions where the displaced Lumads originally came from.

Catamco even said that the evacuees are being “illegally detained” by suspected NPA fronts such as militant partylist groups Bayan Muna and Gabriela.

Zarate and Gabriela Rep. Luz Ilagan were invited in a dialog supposedly initiated by Catamco, to convince Lumads to leave the evacuation compound of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) in Davao City on July 23.

The Christian sect is also being tagged as a communist front.

In the dialogue that turned out to be a confrontation between the IPs and Catamco, the latter insulted the Lumads, as well as Zarate and Ilagan, by telling them that they stink.

Catamco, following the incident, was tagged by the Lumads as ‘persona non grata’.

The Bayan Muna solon, who defended the Lumads, is now facing charges of illegal detention.
Zarate, in an interview with the Tribune, said that despite the Lumad’s cultural negation of firearms, “some seek justice through options offered by the NPA”.

“We cannot actually blame them if they decide to take arms and join the NPA. The justice system itself is doubtful, you know. It actually turns out that the AFP has become recruiting agents of the NPA because of the conditions they engender and their anti-Lumad campaign,” Zarate said.

“In the end, its not just between the NPA and the AFP. The true victims here are the Lumads,” Zarate added.

Zarate told the Tribune that he is trying to look into the possibility that Catamco’s pork barrel funds - as she is recently cited in a pork-related case before the Ombudsman - might have benefitted certain paramilitary forces.
 

http://www.tribune.net.ph/headlines/militias-afp-spawn-de-facto-mindanao-ml