By DEAN M. BERNARDO
CALBAYOG CITY, Samar.—In Barangay San Jose in this city, local folk point to nipa walls, bamboo posts and even the village’s few paved roads, all riddled with bullet holes.
These holes have been here since midnight of Feb. 20 when 200 armed men raided Happy Valley, the name used to refer to the villages in the northeastern edge of the city, on the fringes of Calbayog City’s forests. Among those raided were Barangays San Jose, Sinantan, and Patong.Witnesses said several of those men were wearing fatigues, some with name patches bearing the logo of the Philippine National Police’s Regional Mobile Group (RMG). Witnesses also said the men put on bonnets to cover their faces when the villagers emerged from their huts. The armed men then began running around the village’s narrow alleys, firing their weapons indiscriminately into the air and into the houses, breaking down walls and forcing sleeping villagers to come out.
Amid the frenzy, villagers said, a man’s voice heard over a bullhorn shouted in the local dialect Waray, “To all of those who are courageous, we are finally here. Come out so we can find out who is really tough. Let’s have a gun duel.”
Men, women, children and even infants were herded into the barangay’s dance hall. The villagers said the men were forced to strip naked and walk to the assembly area. Everyone was told to lie face down on the floor with hands on their heads.
In that raid, the armed men killed one Michael Terga, locally called“Michael Taga,” supposedly a leader of a band of goons with oustanding arrest warrants. They also apprehended more than two dozen militia members and confiscated several high-powered weapons.
The scene could have been borrowed from the 1970s and 1980s when Samar was a communist stronghold and the military was raiding villages in its fight against a growing insurgency. But it happened just a month before the start of the local election campaign period this year, and is part of what is supposed to be a police campaign against private armies.
Residents of San Jose said, however, the supposed members of the Calbayog police appeared without showing any warrants. Even worse, villagers believe the operation was nothing more than a violent political revenge by one group of politicians against another, supposedly in the name of peaceful elections.
For decades, Samar province has been in the grip of politicians and armed groups fighting for control over some of the country’s poorest people.
Although it is a city, two-thirds of Calbayog is forested and agricultural land. In this city 735 kilometers southeast of Manila, the villages of San Jose, Sinantan and Patong lie in the forested regions where residents depend mostly on the fruits of the land, planting vegetables and root crops, and earning better profits only if their copra harvests are abundant and market prices are high.
Life in these barangays is simple but not easy. The barangays do have electricity. In the case of San Jose, several households that are relatively well-off do own radios, some have karaoke machines, while others have television sets.
Police authorities say it is in places like these where private armies breed. In a peace forum here April 24, the Philippine National Police Region 8 identified 21 areas in the province as election hot spots. Some 60 police officers based in Tacloban City have been deployed to Samar to man checkpoints and ensure peace and order in the area come May 10.
In the last three years, the PNP Region 8 command said, at least 39 politically related killings have occurred in Calbayog City and in the town of Gandara, all located in the first congressional district of Samar. Supporters of the Nacionalista Party claimed that most of those who were murdered were party supporters.
From January to July 2009 alone, at least 35 shooting incidents have occurred in Calbayog City, leaving 28 people dead. Only seven cases have been resolved as the perpetrators were mostly unidentified or at large. This prompted the Diocese of Calbayog to issue in July last year a statement strongly condemning the series of killings.
The PNP Region 8 also confirmed in the forum that there were at least eight known private armies operating in the whole Samar province and at least three have been dismantled.
The Independent Commission against Private Armies (ICAPA), created by the Arroyo administration in the aftermath of the Nov. 23 Maguindanao massacre, has also confirmed the presence of private armies under the employ of politicians and families in Samar.
In late April, members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines raided the home of Rep. Reynaldo Uy in Barangay Rawis and confiscated several unregistered firearms and a grenade. Uy denied staying in that house and condemned the raid done by the military.
ICAPA members lamented, however, that despite the commission’s sincere intentions to dismantle private armies in Eastern Visayas before the May 2010 national elections, there was simply not enough time to do so, especially with the lack of cooperation from the political leaders of the region.
Control over Samar island has passed from one group of politicians to another over the past four decades. Before martial law, the Abrigo clan headed by former congressman Felipe Abrigo ruled the whole island. In 1965, Abrigo proposed a law dividing the island into three provinces—Northern Samar, Eastern Samar, and Western Samar, which would later be renamed as Samar—and would retain the island province’s original capital, Catbalogan, as the seat of the new province.
The ruling family in Samar province used to be that of former congressman Jose Roño, who was minister of local governments under former President Ferdinand Marcos. But new families have become the landmarks of politics in the last 20 years, foremost among them the Sarmientos, Tuazons, Tans and Uys now holding key elective posts in Calbayog City and in the two congressional districts of Samar province.
Milagros T. Tan, the incumbent governor, is running for representative of the second congressional district, while her daughter Sharee Ann Tan is running for governor to replace her mother.
In the first congressional district, Calbayog Mayor Mel Senen Sarmiento is running for the House of Representatives against former congressman Rodolfo Tuazon. The incumbent congressman, Reynaldo Uy, has completed three terms and is running to regain the post he once held, that of mayor of Calbayog. A son of Uy is running as city councilor.
These four families are behind the current political rivalries in the province. The Tuazon and the Tan clans belong to the NP while the Uys are allied with the Sarmientos and belong to the Liberal Party.
Statement condemning Happy Valley raid
The people of Barangay San Jose believe the raid on Feb. 20 was not really part of a campaign against private armies, but part of the political rivalry between the Liberals and the Nacionalistas. Villagers in San Jose are known to be openly supporting the NP.
In fact, villagers said the 200 men claiming to be the raiding team supposedly sent from Calbayog were on board five dump trucks used by the city for collecting garbage and another used by the city engineer’s office.
“Some of them (armed men) were actually goons,” one villager said. “People here recognized some of the men before they started putting bonnets to cover their faces. A number of them were men commissioned to do road repairs who are suspected to be members of a private army.”
Among those wounded was a 13-year-old boy who was sleeping inside his family’s hut during the raid. A bullet pierced his legs. Several other older boys were also forcibly taken out of their huts. Some were kicked and stepped on, while those who resisted or even spoke were hit with the butt of guns.
When some of the villagers mustered the courage to ask the reason for the raid, the armed told them they had several arrest and search warrants for certain men. But when the villagers asked for copies of the warrants and for what crimes, the arresting officers did not present the documents and merely said in Waray, “No more questions. Just bring him to us and no one will have to die today.”
Ann Jalajajay, 
mother of the 13-year-old injured boy and of four other children, begged the men to stop firing their guns, shouting, “Please! Please, stop shooting at our house. There are very small children sleeping. Please, have mercy and spare us.”
She further said her family was forced out of the hut and into the dance hall. “My eldest daughter was crying. I was holding on to my baby as the men fired their guns from underneath our floor. My daughter shrieked when she saw her brother was bleeding in the legs. Blood was all over the floor.”
The injured boy was ignored and left behind by the armed men as the rest of the household was dragged out into the hall. It took more than an hour for the armed men to leave and for a member of the barangay council to rush the injured boy to a hospital.
Jalajajay said her son was later taken in by a kind family in Calbayog when they could not afford to pay for the hospital bill but added that her daughter is still in shock. “It’s been two months and she barely speaks. She remains traumatized from the incident,” she said.
Most of the villagers said that these men, supposedly police officers or members of the military, fired their guns into their homes, violently and forcibly removing residents from their huts. They also took whatever they could, including cash, mobile phones, and even the meager food supplies that they had like rice and canned goods, the villagers said.
Four men were taken from San Jose, some were imprisoned in Calbayog, while another was reportedly jailed in Tacloban City. Some of the men taken from the three barangays were later released on bail or freed days after the incident without any charges filed.
One villager even claimed she had to give about P156,000 as bribe to get her husband released. The amount was all the money the couple had after years of selling their copra harvests, she said.
Of the 27 huts in Barangay San Jose, many are now vacant. A number of residents have fled their homes and moved to places like Tacloban or even Manila where they believe the armed men who raided their homes would never be able to reach and hurt them again.
Residents fear retaliation from powerful politicians once the story of the raid comes out, but they know others need to hear about what happened there.
One resident said: “They claim that the killings have stopped but in reality, the deaths are not being reported and these goons paid by politicians in power are terrorizing us. Our lives are in constant danger if we do not support these politicians and vote for them.”
(Dean M. Bernardo is a long-time television producer and correspondent for a London-based news agency who was in Samar to film a documentary.)