By ROMEL REGALADO BAGARES 
KORONADAL CITY, South Cotabato.–What is now known here as the Ampatuan massacre has wiped out the staff of the five-year-old pioneering vernacular newsweekly Periodico Ini (This Periodical) based in the city and left many news organizations in five towns missing a staff member or two.
Police and military officials said Wednesday the total casualty list has breached the 57th mark, with the recovery of the remains of 10 more victims, three of them journalists.
A list pieced together by CenterLaw 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. 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. Other news reports, however, say up to 37 journalists were on that convoy.
Below is the list compiled by the center, which also showed, with the exception of two cases, the journalists’ news organization:
1. Ian Subang, Socsargen Today, General Santos City
2. Lea Dalmacio, Socsargen News, General Santos City
3. Gina De la Cruz, Saksi News, General Santos City
4. Maritess Cablitas, News Focus, General Santos City
5. Rosell Morales, News Focus, General Santos City
6. Henry Araneta, Radio DZRH, General Santos City
7. Neneng Montaño, Saksi News, General Santos City
8. Alejandro Bong Reblando, Manila Bulletin, General Santos City
9. Victor Nuñez, UNTV, General Santos City
10. Mark Gilbert Mac-Mac Arriola, UNTV, General Santos City
11. Bal Cachuela, Punto News, Koronadal City
12. Ernesto Bart Maravilla, Bombo Radyo, Koronadal City
13. Ronie Perante, Gold Star Daily correspondent, Koronadal City
14. Joel Parcon, Prontiera News, Koronadal City
15. Jun Legarte, Prontiera News, Koronadal City
16. Rey Merisco, Periodico Ini, Koronadal City
17. John Caniban, Periodico Ini, Koronadal City
18. Arturo Betia, Periodico Ini, Koronadal City
19. Noel Decena, Periodico Ini, Koronadal City
20. Rani Razon, Periodico Ini, Koronadal City
21. Jhoy Duhay, Gold Star Daily, Tacurong City
22. Andy Teodoro, Central Mindanao Inquirer, Tacurong City
23. Jimmy Cabilo, Midland Review, Tacurong City
24. Reynaldo Bebot Momay, Midland Review, Tacurong City
25. Napoleon Salaysay, Mindanao Gazette, Cotabato City
26. Jun Gatchalian, Davao City
27. Lindo Lupogan, News Media Gazette, Davao City
Of the 27, two men–Momay and Lupogan–have remained missing, according to interviews with members of their families. (UPDATE: Lupogan’s body lies in state at Collado Memorial Homes in Tacurong City.) So far, CenterLaw has been able to confer with the families of 12 of the slain journalists on legal assistance. Two local journalists’ association pledged to assist CenterLaw in reaching out to more families.
An entire staff wiped out
“I did not know my whole staff had gone to join that fateful trip,” said Freddie E. Solinap, the 40-year-old editor and publisher of Periodico Ini, the newsweekly, which is published in Hiligaynon, a Visayan language spoken by a majority of this city’s 160,000 residents.
On Monday, some 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 traveling in a six-vehicle convoy. The groups were 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 in what was said to be the single deadliest attack on journalists in modern history. Solinap and his wife Normalita, 38, founded the Periodico Ini newsweekly afer years of working as sales manager for another weekly.
The enormity of the situation was brought home to the couple after they took stock of what the carnage cost the newsweekly and their loyal readers. The newsweekly lost John Caniban, bureau chief in nearby Sultan Kudarat town; Arturo Betia, marketing manager; Noel Decena, circulation manager who also doubles as a reporter; Rani Razon, sales manager; and Rey Merisco, columnist.
Many of the slain journalists worked in small community papers dependent largely on paid legal notices, with some of them putting out no more than 50 copies of their publications week after week.
According to news reports, the gunmen fired at the victims pointblank. Some of the victims were trussed up, tortured or mutilated. The suspects later on dumped or buried their victims in mass graves scattered all over a small area in a town named after the incumbent governor’s family.
Mangudadatu was quoted in news reports as saying the body of his murdered wife had been mutilated; a sister and an aunt who joined his wife in the convoy were both pregnant.
“My wife’s private parts were slashed four times, after which they fired a bullet into it,” he told journalists in an interview. “They speared both of her eyes, shot both her breasts, cut off her feet, fired into her mouth. I could not begin to describe the manner by which they treated her.”
Haphazard handling of evidence
The chief worry now of crime investigators is the uphill battle they face in fighting the elements as the political and security crisis entered the third day. Official autopsies on the recovered victims remains have been painstakingly slow and an acute lack of sophisticated forensic equipment and facilities, made worse by the haphazard handling by investigators of the crime scene, has made evidence preservation essential to a successful prosecution of the perpetrators doubly difficult.
Officials of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines who visited the crime scene were appalled to see 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. They arrived just in time to see the backhoe’s claw unearth a woman’s bloodied and broken body.
Authorities pulled out from the same mass grave the remains of DZRH‘s Henry Araneta, and UNTV‘s Victor Nuñez and Mark Gilbert Mac-Mac Arriola, it was subsequently reported.
Families of the victims, frustrated by the disorganized response of government agencies to the tragedy, have confronted Jesus Dureza, presidential adviser for Mindanao affairs who was sent by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to condole with them, during a dialogue at the Casa Romana hotel here.
“Why is it taking them so long to conduct an autopsy on the remains of our loved ones?” said Elliver M. Cablitas, whose wife Maritess, a reporter connected with the News Focus newspaper based in General Santos City, died in the massacre.
Five government doctors–three from the National Bureau of Investigation and two from the Philippine National Police Crime Laboratory Service–had been working round-the-clock to conduct autopsies on the recovered remains of the victims. As of noontime Wednesday, they had completed work on only 10 of the bodies brought in from the crime scene 45 km away in Ampatuan town.
“At the rate they’re going,” said Cablitas, “the remains of his (Cablitas’s) wife would have long been decomposed before the government doctors get the chance to do an autopsy.
The lack of refrigeration facilities to keep the remains from decomposing is also complicating the grim task of identifying the victims and preserving evidence, according to Benito Molino, a veteran forensics investigator engaged by CenterLaw to assist authorities in investigative work.
“We have to move faster,” said Molino, who has spent many years in human rights work as a medical expert for the Medical Action Group and the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearance (AFAD). The government has not fielded enough medico-legal officers to do the autopsies.
Inadequate equipment
Human remains recovered from the crime scene were taken to four funeral homes in the city: the Allen Memorial Homes, Zubiri Funeral Homes, Southern Funeral Homes and the Saint Peter Funeral Homes.
But Molino said he had visited the morgues of Allen Memorial Homes and Southern Funeral Homes and on the basis of what he saw there, concluded that they are not adequately equipped to handle the kind of emergency presented by the Ampatuan massacre.
“I pity the government doctors who had to do the gruesome task,” he said, adding, “They have so much work with so little.” As it often happens in the Philippines, government investigative agencies do not have adequate facilities to preserve human remains recovered in crime investigations.
The Ampatuan massacre is no exception. “They could have at least used lime to slow down the process of decomposition but I did not see any indication that they did that,” said Molino.
The authorities could have also run comprehensive X-rays on the recovered remains to assist investigators in locating bullet fragments as well as establishing bullet trajectories, considering that many of the victims were noted to have sustained extensive bullet wounds. But this very simple procedure will certainly have proven to be prohibitive for often cash-strapped government investigative agencies to perform, he said.
Molino said he found it incredulous that no one from the police immediately informed the families of victims to bring items that would help them identify their loved ones, such as photographs and dental and medical records.
Confusion and complaints
In fact, until Wednesday many of the families remained clueless about the proper procedure to take. Some were lucky enough to have been able to identify loved ones through the clothes, ring or shoes they wore to their deaths. Others looked for physical identifying marks on their loved ones’ bodies such as moles on their faces to identify them. But this would have been difficult, if not impossible, to do in cases where the remains have already reached an advanced stage of decomposition.
In many instances, after identifying the remains of their loved ones at the crime scene, families could not trace the morgue or funeral home to which the victims remains’ had been taken.
This was a common complaint raised by the victims’ families with Dureza, as local social welfare officials struggled to cope with the litany of complaints. Dureza admitted such was the case, and noted that at the Zubiri Funeral Homes, for example, four of the 14 bodies brought there by recovery teams have yet to be identified.
Dureza authorized the release through the local social welfare office of P10,000 for each victim as the national government’s financial assistance. He also gave assurances that the national government will shoulder other funeral costs.
In a meeting with State Prosecutor Leo Dacer and Kidapawan City Prosecutor Al Calica, CenterLaw raised concerns about the haphazard way in which evidence vital to the successful prosecution of the case was being handled. Dacera and Calica were tapped by the justice department to prepare the case against the suspects.
CenterLaw is now looking to lease a refrigerated van to store the recovered human remains from Ampatuan town and a suitable space with a generous supply of water where autopsies may be conducted.
Indignation
Shock, disbelief and anger had by turns swept the closely knit community of local journalists in the region.
“This is just too much,” said Joseph Jubelag, a Manila Standard Today correspondent based in General Santos city. He narrowly missed death after a hotel incident gave him and colleague Aquiles Zoño of the Philippine Daily Inquirer the goose bumps and convinced them not to join the convoy.
Jubelag, whose family runs a small printing press, had been tasked by colleagues to oversee the repatriation of the remains of General Santos City-based journalists killed in the Ampatuan massacre.
“Many of us feel like we have lost our very own,” he said. “Our problem is that no autopsy has been done yet on our colleagues’ remains so we cannot yet bring them home,” he added.
Jubelag expressed his anger at the government’s continuing failure to put a stop to the impunity that has targeted journalists in the Philippines, saying, “When will this stop?”
Around 200 people attended an indignation rally at the city rotunda early yesterday evening where messages of solidarity were expressed by local officials, church leaders, and various journalists’ organizations.
Many voiced fears of a whitewash in the investigations. Solinap, editor and publisher of Periodico Ini, said no massacre can dissuade him from pursuing his vision of journalism. “I remain undaunted,” he said, adding that he and his wife continue to encourage their three children to seriously consider taking up journalism as a profession and continue the family heritage.
Romel Regalada Bagares is executive director of the Center for International Law which is a member of the Southeast Asia Media Defense Network.