By Juan Mercado
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:01:00 12/01/2009
Filed Under: Maguindanao Massacre, political killings, Election Violence, Crime and Law and Justice, Media killings, Inquirer Politics
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s legacy has been indelibly stained by a bucolic Maguindanao hillside turned into Khmer Rouge-style killing field.
In Ampatuan town, 57 bodies—civilians, journalists and passers-by—were exhumed from mass graves. Genitals of 22 women were shattered by gunshots, Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera revealed. Some were still breathing when dumped into the pit.
Racheted brutality triggered nationwide protests. “We will be their witness,” said the pooled newspaper editorial “Commitment.” “There will be justice” for all those slain. This follows the first-ever pooled editorial by metropolitan papers in the early 1970s that flayed “Compartmentalized justice.”
Young Filipinos didn’t see the ruthlessness of the Japanese kempetai and Filipino quislings. Now, we must look beyond Ampatuan to mass graves elsewhere, if we are to understand the gutting of this nation’s soul
Buried in Russia’s Katyn forests are 21,768 Polish officers, dissidents and prisoners. They were killed by Soviets in 1941. In Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng Prison, only 7 out of over 17,000 inmates survived. The rest were executed in Choeung Ek and other killing fields.
“In Kosovo, mass graves are everywhere,” the Associated Press reports. “Turn down the wrong road, looking for a mass grave of 35 ethnic Albanians, and men there say: ‘No, that’s the next village. But we’ll show where we buried seven of our fathers and uncles…’”
Serbs dug up corpses with a backhoe to blot out evidence. “The 2 1/2-month war was time enough for killing untold thousands. But it wasn’t enough time for cleaning up afterward.”
When soldiers reached Sitio Masalay, the killers had fled. They discovered the engine of a Maguindanao provincial government backhoe still running. The backhoe crushed and buried bodies and vehicles. It carved out mass graves a day before the massacre.
Nazis also completed gas chambers and graves at concentration camps, from Dachau, Buchenwald to Auschwitz, before Jewish prisoners arrived. But “there wasn’t enough time for cleaning up afterward.”
Since then, backhoe operator Hanid Delayudin has vanished. Dead men tell no tales?
The Philippines is no stranger to political killings. Until the Ampatuan slaughter, killings tended to be individual, not en masse. A sniper killed Ilocos Norte politician Julio Nalundasan in 1935. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Ferdinand Marcos. Gunmen cut down Antique Gov. Evelio Javier in February 1986. That fueled outrage in People Power I.
Marilyn Esperat of Midland Review in Tacurong City, and Anna Politkovskaya of Novaya Gazeta in Moscow were gunned down. Esperat exposed fraud in the agriculture department. Politkovskaya documented torture, mass executions and kidnappings in Chechnya.
No one has been held accountable. The message is clear: “You can get away with it.” “There are no more rules, no lines left to cross,” Inquirer’s Pat Evangelista wrote. The Mumbai terrorists slaughtered 173 hotel guests and wounded 308. “And the Maguindanao killers mowed down everybody. So did MILF ‘rogue’ commanders Kato, Bravo and others in earlier rampages.”
In that rampage, they used government facilities: guns, bullets, uniforms, vehicles, even backhoe. Their salaries came from taxes paid by the victims. They utilized a government check point to corral victims.
Recall how 22 Presidential Anti Organized Crime Task Force agents abducted, tortured and killed publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver. Former President Joseph Estrada and Sen. Panfilo Lacson, then PNP chief, deny they “winked” at those rubouts.
Warlords get away with murder, since they provide “Vote ATMs.” The Ampatuans shut out Fernando Poe when Ms Arroyo ran for the presidency. They ensured a 12-0 tally for the administration’s senatorial candidates in 2007.
Ingratitude is not one of Ms Arroyo’s flaws. To swipe a line from Winston Churchill: She “has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
“The bigger prize is the power (by warlords) to monopolize or extort money from those engaged in lucrative business of illegal drugs, gambling and smuggling,” Francisco Lara wrote in Mindanews.
Nine Ampatuans hold public office. Did they file Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth? Do they reflect explosion of net worth, similar to, say, Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo’s SALN?
The younger Arroyo urged the President to run for Congress. And Mama hints that she may just oblige. The deadline for filing of certificates of candidacy is early Advent. Ironically, this liturgical season’s theme is “Make straight the crooked ways.”
There’s much to straighten out. Aside from arrests and prosecution, structural reforms are needed. One is to strip local executives of power to select their police chiefs. Another is the Comelec’s wont to locate satellite offices to suit the whims of warlords.
Maguindanao first had its Comelec satellite in Cotabato City, Fr. Eliseo Mercado notes. “Then Datu Udtog moved it to Pagalungan. Post Datu Udtog, it was shunted back to Cotabato, only to be bounced to Shariff Aguak. Zacaria Candao returned it to Cotabato; later to dump it in Sultan Kudarat. Ampatuan moved it back to the ‘capitol’ in Maganoy. This enables politicians to exert total control,” the Oblate father notes. “Experiences of 2004 and 2007 elections and Comelec track record in the province are too gross to ignore.”
Indeed, what does it profit a man to cream the votes but, in the end, turn the country into a Khmer Rouge clone
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