By ROMEL REGALADO BAGARES
GENERAL SANTOS CITY.—Sixty-nine-year-old Maura Montaño seethed with anger when she was asked what she thought of the men—no, the monsters—who did terrible things last Monday in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao to her eldest child, Marife “Neneng” Montaño, the 44-year-old editor of the bilingual newsweekly Saksi Mindanaoan, a fledgling four-page publication that, all told, was no older than 12 issues.
“I want justice for my daughter,” she said in her native Cebuano, her narrow, deeply furrowed face twitching. When told what she may be up against, she said it does not matter anymore. No one who does those cruel, inhuman things to kind-hearted persons like her daughter deserves the kind of consideration they’re now getting from the government, she said.
The women who sat around her to comfort the family matriarch as she mourned her daughter’s death at the Collado Memorial Funeral Homes in this city nodded in agreement, their faces etched with sorrow and sympathy.
On Monday, about 100 gunmen linked to Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. allegedly abducted in broad daylight a convoy of aides and relatives of a rival politician, Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu, and a group of journalists, as they were travelling in a six-vehicle convoy headed for the local Commission on Elections office to formally file Mangudadatu’s certificate of candidacy for the post now occupied by Ampatuan.
Hours later, news broke out that the convoy had been massacred. The carnage, unprecedented in its viciousness and scale, was said to have stemmed from the long-simmering feud in the region between two political families, the Mangudadatos and the Ampatuans.
Nay Maura’s daughter Neneng, a single mother to two children aged 16 and 6, was one of 29 community journalists confirmed to have died in the Nov. 23 massacre in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao. One other journalist is still missing.
On Friday, after consulting with her family, Nay Maura appointed lawyers from the Center for International Law (CenterLaw) to begin what may well be a long quest for justice for her daughter who was taken away from her by the people she called animales with much evident derision.
She remembers that the night before Neneng joined the ill-fated convoy to her early death, she had a word with her daughter yet again about her chosen profession. “I pleaded with my daughter to leave media work and opt for a quiet life,” Nay Maura said. But so unlike her wont, the journalist simply kept her peace and did not say a word to her mother.
They’d have had countless conversations in the past about the topic and each time, Neneng would argue vehemently against the idea of shifting careers. “She would say quiet office work doesn’t sit well with her. Neneng would say she was meant to be a journalist and that was that.” Nay Maura didn’t know that night was the last time she would see her daughter alive.
The Montaños are one of only four families who have engaged CenterLaw in filing cases against the perpetrators of what is now considered the single most devastating attack on journalists in modern history. All four signed documents appointing the center’s lawyers and consenting to further forensic examination of the remains of their loved ones, if need be.
But most of the families the center has had consultations with are hesitant. With one of the most influential political families in the region and a known ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo implicated in the carnage, it should not be difficult to understand why.
“Ti sir, hindi bala kami mabutang sa peligro sini (Sir, don’t you think doing this would place us in peril’s way)?” the wife of one of the victims in the carnage asked in Hiligaynon during a consultation with the center. “Basi bala delikado man kami sini (You know, it might be dangerous for us to do this).”
She told the center she will have to consult first with the other members of her husband’s family whether or not to pursue the case against those who killed her husband. Her sentiments were echoed by more than half of the 12 families consulted by the center so far. There is, of course, the necessary requirements of grief, especially where a loved one died an unspeakable death.
Their fears may not be unfounded. Indeed, in the recent past, so much blood has been spilt in the bitter rivalry between the two families, without doubt spurred and exacerbated by rido, or revenge killing practiced by influential families in Moro communities in the region. One is tempted to say it assumes Shakespearean proportions, but as the slaughter in Ampatuan town shows, it even seems much worse than that.
Across the ethno-religious divide hereabouts, public memory remembers well stories of past atrocities and outrages—whether true or not—allegedly visited by the Mangudadatos and the Ampatuans upon their avowed enemies. It is public knowledge both families have well-stocked armories and well-maintained private armies in a region where the State has long ceded its supposed monopoly of the sword to whichever private group that was willing to strike a compromise with its aims and purposes.
They may very well remember that it took the national government three days to act on the massacre; and when it did, authorities gave the principal suspect VIP treatment, with a spokesperson for the President publicly declaring that Arroyo will maintain her friendship with the Ampatuans through thick and thin. They may very well remember that both the police and the military suspiciously made themselves scarce during the crucial hours when the slaughter could have been prevented, and this, despite requests for security escorts from the Mangudadatos. They may very well remember that in the May 2004 presidential elections, the Ampatuans delivered the votes that ensured her lead of a million votes over her closest rival, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.; thus the Ampatuans, it can certainly be said, helped launch the “Hello Garci” scandal that directly implicated Mrs. Arroyo to massive cheating in the elections.
In search of a safe haven
Lawyer Harry L. Roque Jr., Centerlaw chair, acknowledges that the security of the families of the victims is a big concern, especially when a credible United Nations organ has caustically faulted the many unforgivable failings of the Department of Justice’s witness protection program. “The Alston Report did not mince words when it said one of the reasons why nobody is convicted in this country for impunity is that witnesses are afraid to testify in court,” he said. “The State simply cannot protect the witnesses and their families.”
He was referring to a report made by Philip Alston, a well-respected Australian academic and UN rapporteur, who visited the Philippines in 2007 to investigate rampant extrajudicial killings in the country directed at political dissidents, lawyers and, yes, journalists.
He also noted that the new rules for the Writ of Amparo issued by the Supreme Court remains hobbled by the lack of accredited sanctuaries or havens of protection for witnesses and survivors of human rights violations.
“The idea is to strengthen the witness protection program of the state. The problem in the Philippines is that as has been noted by many credible national and international human rights organizations, it is the agents of the state themselves who commit atrocities against the citizen. Under the circumstances, it seems foolhardy to entrust to the State the task of providing a safe haven to the citizen,” said Roque.
He suggests that the Supreme Court issue guidelines for accrediting private institutions as sanctuaries.
The suggestion comes across as official heresy from the point of view of public law and international law, but the Supreme Court’s decision to draft rules for the protection of citizens that allow for private persons and institutions to provide it in lieu of state agencies may well underscore how desperate the situation is—or just how little trust is now reposed by citizens on their own government, given its dismal human rights record.
On Thursday, state prosecutors began inquest proceedings against the principal suspect in the massacre, Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., the elder Ampatuan’s heir apparent to the gubernatorial post. Only the warring politicians and their lawyers were able to take part in the proceedings. The slain journalists’ grieving families did not have the time or the luxury to send lawyers to argue their case on their behalf at the inquest proceedings.
On Friday, Justice Secretary Agnes Devenadera announced that her prosecutors had found probable cause against Ampatuan, who gave himself up to authorities three days after the incident. “He was giving instructions, he was there when the convoy was blocked, and he was among those who took part in the killings,” the justice secretary said at a press conference.
The scheduled filing on Friday of seven charges of murder against the politician with the regional trial court in Cotabato City, however, did not push through because of the Eid Al’adha holiday which runs till Monday.
It is worth noting that the charges are only for seven murders—most likely of the members of the Mangudadato clan who perished in the slaughter in Ampatuan town—when the casualty list counts 57 persons dead. Some news reports place the toll at 63.
Body count
Also Friday, CenterLaw confirmed the deaths of three more journalists in the massacre. These were Rubello Bataluna and Arnulfo “Benjie” Adolfo, both of whom are correspondents based in the city of the newsweekly Gold Star, published in Cagayan De Oro City. The third journalist was Lindo Lupogan of the Davao City-based News Media Gazette.
This brings to 28 the number of community journalists confirmed to have died in the attack. One journalist—Reynaldo “Bebot” Momay of the Midland Courier based in Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat—is still missing and is also presumed dead.
Indeed, the attack had exacted a heavy toll on community journalism in the region. Periodico Ini (This Periodical) a newsweekly that pioneered publishing in Hiligaynon in Koronadal City (formerly Marbel town) five years ago, lost its entire staff—a complement of six persons—in the carnage. Only its 40-year-old editor-publisher Freddie E. Solinap was left to tend to the newsweekly.
News organizations in at least five nearby towns were missing a staff or two. The Cagayan De Oro City-based Gold Star daily lost its two correspondents in General Santos City and another two correspondents in Koronadal City.
An initial list CenterLaw put together from interviews with victims’ families and information provided by local journalists’ associations show that among those confirmed dead or declared missing were at least 27 journalists, although other news reports said that up to 37 journalists were on that ill-fated convoy. Ten of the journalists came from General Santos City; another 10 from Koronadal City; four from Tacurong City; two from Davao City, and one from Cotabato City.
It is so much institutional history and memory lost that for many members of this closely knit community of local journalists, it is difficult just to begin to imagine what it will take to recover from its aftereffects.
“It is painful just to think about it,” said Rey G. Ombaña, agency manager for the Gold Star newspaper who also heads a press association in General Santos City. “You worked with these people, you swapped stories and jokes with them, covered events together with them—talked about your dreams for the future with them. And now your friends are all dead.”
For want of a backhoe?
At 6 p.m. Wednesday, authorities declared an end to retrieval operations at the crime scene, following the withdrawal by the Sultan Kudarat provincial government of a backhoe it earlier lent for use in the operations.
“Let’s not even talk about the propriety of using a backhoe to dig up the crime scene,” said forensic doctor Ben Molino. “Until now, nobody really knows how many people perished in the massacre. Just because the backhoe has been withdrawn, authorities will now stop evidence gathering and recovery operations there—it doesn’t sound right to me.”
A veteran in his field, Molino was asked by CenterLaw to provide expert advice on forensic evidence gathering. He traveled to Koronadal town and observed autopsies conducted by government doctors on human remains recovered from the crime scene in Ampatuan town.
Indeed, officials of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines who visited the crime scene were appalled to witness police Scene of the Crime Operatives (SOCO), assisted by government troops, use a backhoe to dig up the remains of victims allegedly buried by their killers in a newly-discovered grave in Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town. The NUJP officials arrived just in time to see the backhoe’s claw unearth a woman’s bloodied and broken body.
The forensic doctor has raised serious concerns about the manner in which police investigators had been gathering evidence in the massacre. “Their approach disturbed so much of the crime scene, to say the least,” he said, again noting that the situation has been made doubly difficult by an acute lack of necessary forensic equipment and facilities.
At a meeting Wednesday where Assistant Press Secretary Jess Dureza gave assurances of government support to the families of the massacre victim, Molino stood up and pressed the government official to send additional government doctors to speed up the autopsies on the recovered human remains as well as cadaver bags for the recovery operations at the crime scene.
Dureza promised to promptly attend to it. Two additional teams of forensic doctors and assistants arrived the next day to augment government doctors doing the autopsies. The promised cadaver bags however did not materialize. But with two new teams helping out in the grim task, autopsy work on all the recovered human remains was speeded up, with much of it done by Friday morning.
Brother’s call for justice
Thirty-two-year-old Dolores Bataluna Sumapung remembers how her brother Robello, 44, would bristle at a perceived injustice. “He had always been a fighter,” she said in Hiligaynon of her slain brother, a correspondent for the Gold Star newspaper who perished in the massacre along with colleague Adolfo, his very own protégé and his eldest daughter’s boyfriend.
Dolores tells of a strange experience she had Wednesday afternoon, after her brother’s badly mangled body was found and identified. She was quietly contemplating the tragedy visited upon the family by her brother’s death when a sudden gust of wind toppled a water-filled bottle she had placed on top of the table in the kitchen.
“I couldn’t believe the wind was strong enough to send the bottle crashing into the floor,” she said. “The bottle was heavy, as it was filled to the brim with water. Besides, I had placed it in the middle of the table, to make sure it doesn’t roll down just like that.”
Right there and then, she knew in her heart it was her brother Robello telling—or whispering to her—that their family should press for justice in his senseless and gruesome death.
(A former journalist, Romel Regalado Bagares is a lawyer who serves as Executive Director of the Center for International Law, a free speech advocacy group. The center is a member of the Southeast Asia Media Defense Network.)