Arroyo's failures seen in massacre


By Al Labita
Asia Times
Nov 25, 2009


MANILA - An election-related massacre in the southern Philippines represents the latest blow to the country's faltering democracy and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's enduring inability to enforce the rule of law at the provincial level.

Latest reports say 39 people were killed on Monday in the central Mindanao province of Maguindanao, reportedly by henchmen of a political warlord, after a group of 44 journalists, civilians, supporters and relatives of a local village chief were waylaid by some 100 heavily armed men. Some of the victims were reportedly mutilated and beheaded.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner said that, based on initial reports, the convoy was led by the wife and lawyers of Filipino Muslim village chief Ishmael Toto Mangudadatu, of Buluan town, who was en route to a nearby town to file his certificate of candidacy for provincial governor at next May's elections.

Mangudadatu, who survived the attack, was poised to challenge the governorship against a scion of the Ampatuan family, one of Arroyo's staunchest political allies in Mindanao. Brawner said that the bodies of 21 of the 44 kidnapped victims, including the wife of Mangudadatu, were recovered by troops of the army's 601st Infantry Brigade in Ampatuan town in Maguindanao.

The spokesman said that of the bodies recovered, 13 were women and eight were men, and that some corpses showed "signs of mutilation". "The victims were unarmed, helpless civilians and mostly were female," he said.

National police chief Jesus Verzosa told Agence France-Presse that another 17 bodies were pulled from a shallow grave in the area of the killings, on a hillside in the remote farming village of Saniag, raising the death toll overall to 39.

Media groups said that at least 12 journalists were among those killed.

Brawner said that the military was verifying reports that those who allegedly carried out the massacre were henchmen of the Ampatuan political clan. They allegedly included members of the Maguindanao provincial police, police volunteers, and government militiamen.

The unprecedented killings are the first major poll-related violence in the run-up to the May 10, 2010, national elections. They underscore Arroyo's failure to stem political violence in far-flung and often lawless provincial areas during her eight years in office.

Mangudadatu told a live broadcast interview on Monday that he believed the massacre was politically motivated and heaped the blame on his family's bitter political rival, the Ampatuan clan.

"Never in the history of journalism have the news media suffered such a heavy loss of life in one day," the France-based press freedom advocacy group, Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement.

Television station UNTV confirmed that four of their employees were among those abducted and killed. "We are shocked and sad," UNTV station manager Jay Sonza said.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) condemned the massacre, saying it was troubling that the alleged abductors were led by a politician and a police officer. "Taking someone hostage [who is] about to file a certificate of candidacy is, by itself, a brazen challenge to efforts to strengthen our admittedly fragile democracy," it said in a statement.

"And, if true that a local government official and a police officer are involved, then it says a lot about how far the government has gone to eradicate the warlord politics that continues to reign over many of our provinces, very often the poorest and most underdeveloped," it said.

NUJP urged the government to move to "ensure swift justice on the perpetrators, no matter who they are". Former NUJP chair Inday Espina-Varona likened the incident to "a spear thrust in the heart of our fragile democracy".

"Let us grieve not just for our media colleagues ... Let us grieve most for democracy, for election-related violence violates our people's right to an enlightened choice of leaders. Election-related violence prevents people from asking tough questions of prospective leaders; that violence is almost always aimed at subverting a people's free will," she added.

Varona said most chilling was that, according to military reports, the alleged perpetrators were not just the town mayor and men of a neighboring village, but also involved the local police force, paramilitary forces and senior police officials.

"The government must without question bring those responsible for this massacre to justice, not just the killers but also the masterminds, whoever they are," she said.

Arroyo ordered the military and police to immediately pursue the perpetrators of the massacre and declared a state of emergency for Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces and Cotabato City.

"No effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims and hold the perpetrators accountable to the full limit of the law," she said. "A civilized society has no place for this kind of violence."

The presidential adviser for Mindanao, Secretary Jesus Dureza, earlier suggested to Arroyo that both political clans should be disarmed. "Anything less will not work," he said.

"This is a gruesome massacre of civilians unequalled in recent history. Even women and working media men were not spared. I grieve for those killed while doing their job," Dureza, a veteran journalist and Arroyo's former press secretary, said.

The National Press Club (NPC) and the Alyansa ng Filipinong Mamamahayag (Alliance of Filipino Journalists) also denounced the killing of the journalists. "The incident came as a humiliating slap on the face of efforts to put an end to the culture of impunity that has caused the deaths of scores of journalists," they said in a joint statement.

NPC president Benny Antiporda said that the harshest of punishments should be leveled against the suspects, regardless of their political and personal standing. The NPC has joined the Department of Justice's Task Force 211, a special unit created to look into the stubbornly high number of unresolved media killings across the country, and plans to launch "indignation rallies" to protest violence against the media.

Reporters Without Borders said it had often condemned the culture of impunity and violence in the Philippines, especially in Mindanao. "This time, the frenzied violence of thugs working for corrupt politicians has resulted in an incomprehensible bloodbath," it said.

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