‘Palo Massacre’ victims recall miserable lives after incident

By VICENTE ALEJANDRO

PALO, Leyte—On a normal day the 800 or so residents of Barangay San Agustin here, most of them rice farmers, would still be fast asleep at the break of dawn.

But the loud noise in their ricefields on Nov. 21, 2005 roused them from slumber. The sounds of gunfire and explosions were coming from the area planted with coconut trees.

When the smoke cleared hours later, seven peasants lay dead and several others wounded in the bloody incident now known as the “Palo Massacre.” The villagers accused soldiers from the Army’s 19^th Infantry Battalion of firing without warning on a group of farmers.

Thirty-three-year-old Fe Muriel Dizon Obejas’ husband Roel was among those killed on the spot.

A native of San Agustin, Obejas herself was captured and immediately jailed, on charges of illegal possession of firearms and illegal assembly the military had filed against her and eight other villagers, including her brother, Arnel Dizon.

She and other villagers led miserable lives after the massacre, said the widow.

Obejas said she had to leave her two young children to the care of her relatives while she and her co-accused languished in Leyte provincial jail for nearly a year.

“We were released just five days before the first year anniversary of the Palo Massacre,” she said.

Obejas returned to her village and was able to find work: first, as a staff of a politician, and later as a job-order employee by the Palo municipal government.

“Life then was very hard for me. I was a widow with two young children to take care of,” she said, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

In 2008, Obejas decided to remarry and would later move to Jaro town, also in Leyte, with her two children by Roel and her two children by her second husband. Occasionally, she would visit Barangay San Agustin to see her family, relatives and friends. Her parents moved to Bicol after the killings but are now back in the village.

And she still cries whenever she remembers the massacre and the miserable days that followed, she said.

Many believe that the “Palo Massacre” stemmed from the dispute over a 12-hectare farm. A case was filed in May 1998 with the Provincial Agrarian Reform Adjudicator.

Obejas’ parents, Renato and Fe Dizon, were among those who had filed a case for the “maintenance of peaceful possession and/or reinstatement” in the land against Pedro Margallo and other people who were also claiming the land.

The DAR decided in favor of Dizon’s group, but the case was elevated to the Court of Appeals.

Obejas hopes for an early resolution of the land dispute, which, she said, had claimed the lives of her husband and other farmers.

According to her, the case was first filed in Cebu, but the judge inhibited himself.

Richard Margallo, 35, also a native of San Agustin and Obejas’ co-accused in the firearms case, said their opponents had hired “goons” to intimidate them from pursuing the agrarian dispute case.

He also said he has been living in fear because “intelligence” men follow him whenever he goes outside the village.

Margallo was among the farmers who were about to hold the traditional “tiklos” or land positioning, with the help of Bayan Muna and some other farmers, the morning of the massacre.

Before they could perform the tradition, they were fired upon by soldiers, he said.

Margallo was injured in the attack, hit by shrapnel explosion in the leg, buttock and the side of his body.

He was then the chairman of the San Agustin Farmers Beneficiaries Cooperative (SAFaBenCo). The SAFaBenCo, however, was eventually dissolved because many member-farmers fled their village right after the shooting incident.

On the day before the bloody incident, Margallo said his wife, who was then pregnant with their third child, wanted to join them in the “tiklos.” But he refused to let her come along because of the evening dew and only a small “kamalig” was the available shelter in the field.

After the attack, he said, he was brought to the hospital for treatment. Then he went to Manila, as requested by Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casiño, to narrate the incident before a House investigative body.

According to Margallo, when he went home to Palo he was arrested by the police and detained at the Leyte provincial jail like Obejas on charges of illegal possession of firearms and illegal assembly. He was released three months after he posted bail.

Margallo, Obejas and the other accused denied the illegal possession of firearms charge, saying the guns used as evidence against them were “planted” by the soldiers.

On Nov. 17, 2006, nearly a year after the “Palo Massacre,” Judge Mario Nicolasora acquitted the farmers of illegal possession of firearms —Margallo, Objeas, Dizon, Baltazar Mardo, Ferdinand Montanejos, Artemio Amante, Eulogio Pilapil and Ronilo Orcida.  One of the accused, Joselito Tobe, died in prison before the decision was promulgated.

The accused were release from jail that same day after they posted bail. They were then still facing the illegal assembly case, which since March 2010 has not been heard of anymore, according to Margallo.

“Until now I have not completely paid my debts,” he said. His family had incurred a big debt for his hospital treatment, for his family’s subsistence and his bail while he was in prison.

He added that his father Rene, who was never quite himself again after the incident, passed away in 2006.

Today, Margallo tills the 1.3-hectare land he owns to support his family. He bewails that he cannot engage in other forms of livelihood outside their village because he is being surveilled.

Like Obejas, he too is awaiting resolution of the land dispute case their parents had filed.

(This story is part of the VERA Files project “Human Rights Case Watch” supported by The Asia Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development.)