‘Bloodhounds’ in Palparan’s footsteps
By Vicente Alejandro,
VERA Files
(First of two parts)
PALO, LEYTE—For 60 years since the end of World War II, residents of this coastal town overlooking Leyte Gulf had lived in relative calm.
One of Leyte's most historical towns and the seat of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Eastern Visayas, Palo is popularly known as the site where Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the Liberation Forces landed on Oct. 20, 1944 and began the campaign to liberate the country from Japanese troops.
On Nov. 21, 2005, however, the people of Palo were jolted by what is now considered the "bloodiest" incident since the war.
That morning, a group of peasants had gathered at Barangay San Agustin and were about to start a "tiklos" (mutual exchange of labor) on a piece of land the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) had awarded them, with some help from other farmers and the party-list group Bayan Muna.
Suddenly, soldiers belonging to the Army's 19th Infantry Battalion opened fire, allegedly suspecting they were communist rebels. Seven peasants, including a pregnant woman, were killed on the spot, and about a dozen others were wounded.
A number of extrajudicial killings in the poorest provinces of the Visayas are like the "Palo Masacre," as the incident is now called. Peasants trying to assert claims over the land under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program are accused of being insurgents and summarily killed, often by soldiers, in some cases by other armed groups doing so at the behest of politicians or landowners.
Many of these cases have not even reached the courts, with perpetrators unpunished and allowed to walk free to commit other atrocities.
'Bloodhounds'
Last Nov. 15, the same military unit responsible for the Palo Massacre struck again, killing noted botanist Leonard Co, forest guard Sofronio Cortez and farmer Julio Borromeo in Barangay Lim-ao in Kananga, who were on a research mission for the Philippine National Oil Company.
The military said the three were killed in the crossfire during a supposed encounter with the outlawed New People's Army. But another version of the incident said no such encounter took place and that Co and his companions might have been mistaken for rebels.
The 19th Infantry Battalion, based in Barangay Aguiting in Kananga town in Leyte, has been accused of a string of other atrocities in the Samar and Leyte provinces that resulted in the deaths of scores of civilians.
Activated in 1973, the unit has been called "Bloodhound" after the dog that could sniff out its enemy.
The battalion has also been tagged in the "Palapag Massacre" in Northern Samar in 1999, when it was first assigned to the province, and the "Kananga 9 Massacre" in 2003.
In Palapag, soldiers reportedly strafed a house and killed a family of five, including the pregnant mother. In Kananga, soldiers doused with boiling water nine civilians, among them a pregnant woman and four children, before shooting them in the head at close range.
The military in Eastern Visayas has maintained that all these incidents were "legitimate" operations.
Palparan's shadow
The 19th Infantry Battalion falls under the jurisdiction of the 8th Infantry Division, which was headed by Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan until two months before the Palo Massacre. From the 8th ID, which covers Samar-Leyte, Palparan was moved to the 7th ID in Central Luzon.
The Samar-Leyte killings fit the pattern ascribed to Palparan: Wherever he was assigned, there would be a trail of extralegal killings of activists and suspected rebels. For this, he has been called "Executioner" and "Butcher." Palparan was once quoted as saying he could have ended insurgency in Region 8 had he been given a two-month extension to implement his "clearing operation."
A human rights group based in Eastern Visayas, however, has had enough of the 19th IB and wants it disbanded.
"Time and again they have shown not to protect the rights and interest of the people of Leyte but in fact they remain as the No. 1 violator of these rights: from the basic right to liberty to the sacred right to life," Katungod-SB-Karapatan, the regional Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights, said in a statement dated March 1.
Of the 16 political prisoners in the region, "who were languishing in jail on trumped-up charges," nine of them were allegedly arrested by elements of the 19th Infantry Battalion, Katungod-SB-Karapatan also said. The detainees were also reportedly tortured, the group said.
Another human rights NGO, the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), meanwhile, also expressed alarm over the high incidence of extralegal killings and enforced disappearances in Eastern Visayas, which remain unsolved.
From November 1985 to September 2010, at least 118 victims of extralegal killings and enforced disappearances had been documented in the region, AFAD research and documentation officer Darwin B. Mendiola said.
"The real number of extralegal killings in the region and other parts of the country escapes exact determination. Regardless, however, of the true body count, the mere fact that there are so many extralegal killings is by itself a cause for alarm," he said.
Cases before CHR, prosecutor
In early 2007, the Commission on Human Rights Region 8 office recommended to the Deputy Ombudsman for the Military the filing of multiple murder and frustrated murder cases against the soldiers over the Palo Massacre.
"Since then nothing has been heard of the case," said Desiree Pontejos, chief of the CHR-8 Legal Division.
Pontejos said his office forwarded 45 documents—"case records and allied documents"— to the Ombudsman after its investigation found basis to charge the soldiers with murder and frustrated murder for the Palo Massacre.
But the survivors said they are in the dark about the complaint they lodged before the CHR.
Richard Margallo, 35, then chairperson of the San Agustin Farmers-Beneficiaries Cooperative, said many of the farmers fled their village after the seven—Bernabe Burra Jr., Eric Nogal, Roel Obejas, Richard Tante, Gerry Almerino, Eufemia Burra and Alma Bartoline, who was seven months pregnant—were killed.
The farmers feared they were being followed by the military, "especially (after) they were unable to prove in court that we were armed," according to Margallo who showed up with two other survivors, Perlito Burra, 33, and Ariel Dizon, 30, for the interview with VERA Files somewhere in Leyte.
Besides the case before the CHR, survivors and relatives of the fatalities had filed a criminal complaint against the military before the prosecutor's office. Accused of multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder, serious physical injuries, robbery with violence against or intimidation against persons and incriminating innocent persons were Col. Pedro Fernando, Capt. Wilfredo Com-as Jr., Capt. Daniel Tiangco, Lt. Col. Lope Digoy, 1Lt. Luel Adrian Benedicto, and 1Lt. Mener Gutierrez, among others.
On Oct. 30, 2007 Prosecutor Andres G. Yu dismissed the case for "lack of merit." The complainants received the resolution only two months later.
Yu's decision prompted Tabang Palo (Help Palo), an alliance of groups and individuals providing the victims with medical and legal assistance, to express its "total disgust and outrage."
It complained that the prosecutor gave weight to the testimony of Marivic Macawile over the almost 20 affidavits of survivors and relatives who said they were ordinary peasants mercilessly shot at by soldiers.
Macawile was a survivor reportedly taken by the military from police custody, and later turned up with an "admission" that she was a member of the NPA. She then turned state witness.
Turning the tables
The military, in turn, accused Margallo and seven other farmers of illegal possession of firearms and illegal assembly, but a court acquitted them of illegal possession of firearms on Nov. 17, 2006.
The farmers had testified that soldiers "planted" the guns they allegedly recovered.
The last they heard about the case of illegal assembly was in March 2010 when they were called to a hearing. "We were not subpoenaed again," Margallo said.
Margallo, meanwhile, said the agricultural lands that were awarded to them by DAR, including the land where the massacre occurred, remain with the landlords.
He said the landlords have been citing a case they reportedly filed before the Court of Appeals in 2006 as a reason for holding on to the land.
The farmer-leader also accused the landlords of intimidation and harassment, and of hiring "goons" from other places to discourage them from pursuing their claim.
According to Margallo, justice for the farmers would come only when the perpetrators of the massacre are made to answer for their crime and the disputed lands are finally turned over to them. (To be concluded)
(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. VERA Files is put out by veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues.)
