SENATORS investigating the April 1 bloody dispersal of protesting farmers in Kidapawan City questioned police and local officials Thursday about the presence of M-16 wielding personnel at the protest site.
Cotabato provincial police director Senior Supt. Alexander Tagum, however, told the Senate hearing in Davao City that policemen from the Civil Disturbance Management Unit were unarmed. Personnel who were seen in combat gear and armed with assault rifles did not belong to their group, he said, suggesting they could have come from another tactical security group.
Despite the two deaths and more than 100 injured, Tagum said his men observed maximum tolerance, and showed a video showing protesting farmers beating up a fallen policeman.
But Senator Alan Peter Cayetano said police units assigned to Kidapawan did not seem to follow the proper regulations for enforcing a dispersal.
PHOTO BY: ARIEL CAGADAS
“Why did the police have long firearms and live ammunition? It is clear in the law the enforcers should not carry firearms,” Cayetano said.
“Why did they have guns? Why were the SWAT members there? They are trained in anti-terrorism,” he added.
He also said a video taken during the dispersal showed policemen aiming their guns at protesters.
When Cayetano asked Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Mendoza about reports that communist rebels infiltrated the dispersal, she said they had no such reports but said she would look into it.
Earlier, she had claimed the farmers’ ranks had been infiltrated by communist rebels.
Cayetano questioned the absence of national leaders at Thursday’s hearing.
“Most of my questions are for the secretaries. The problem is, I only see one undersecretary here. Not even one secretary is here. This is a national issue and they are not here? I hope we don’t have to issue subpoenas to these secretaries if we aren’t satisfied with the findings today,” Cayetano said.
The chairman of the Senate committee on human rights, Teofisto Guingona III, asked why protesting farmers who were demanding food received bullets instead.
“As a result of the merciless dispersal of their mass action, a few have died and more than a hundred are still nursing injuries. I am sad that their misery continues to this very day,” said the senator from Mindanao.
Commission on Human Rights Commissioner Gwendolyn Pimentel-Gana told the Senate panel there were indeed disturbing findings which we are still pursuing in terms of the investigation. She admitted they are baffled by some data that arose during the initial investigation.
“We are still assessing data gathered by our field investigator, but we already saw some disturbing incidents,” she said.
She said they discovered that pregnant women and senior citizens were among those arrested and detained by policemen following the dispersal.
“I have talked to three pregnant women in the detention center. We have observed that a lot of senior citizens have indeed been picked up, both women and men. There are questions whether they are even directly involved or the ones who committed the direct assault,” said Gana.
“I am appealing to the PNP to please individually review their cases and see if there are indeed evidence against these people,” said Gana.
Cayetano called on the PNP to release all illegally detained farmers during the Senate’s investigation.
The farmers who attended the Senate hearing turned emotional as they related the events of the dispersal. They insisted that it was only hunger that drove them to stage the protest action to get the attention of the government.
The Palace on Thursday denied Cayetano’s allegations that the funds for the El Niño victims had been withheld by the Aquino administration.
“Senator Cayetano’s allegation is untrue and unfounded. Since the creation of the Cabinet-level El Niño Task Force, funds and resources were deployed to mitigate the effects of El Niño and assure stable food and water supply,” said Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma, Jr., in a statement.
“The comprehensive Roadmap to Address the Impact of El Niño [RAIN] that was drawn up last August 2015 is still being implemented and fine-tuned to ensure that gaps in service delivery are addressed,” Coloma said.
“Government is aware that the El Niño crisis affects the poorest and most vulnerable among our people and is firmly determined to see to it that our people’s needs are met in a timely manner,” said Coloma.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad also denied Cayetano’s allegations.
“Government agencies have their own funds for calamity and emergency requirements included in their regular budgets,” Abad said.
“Aside from this, they also have quick response funds. These funds are included in the comprehensive release which were received early by the agencies,” Abad said.
But vice presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. today said Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala had a lot of explaining to do on how it was spending the budget of his department.
He said he suspected the budget was being used for politics rather than programs to help farmers cope with the El Niño phenomenon and the drought that it brought.
For 2016, records show that the department had a budget of more than P2 billion for El Niño mitigation programs.
A Kidapawan City court on Thursday lowered the bail to be posted by farmers who were charged for assaulting a policeman during the bloody dispersal on April 1.
Ephraim Cortez of the National Union of People’s Lawyers, citing a ruling from the Kidapawan City Regional Trial Court Branch 17, said that instead of P12,000, the 81 farmers will only have to pay P2,000 each for their temporary liberty.
Earlier, Presiding Judge Arvin Balagot served a search warrant for the seven buildings inside the church compound on Saturday, claiming that the farmers brought guns and ammunition, but they did not find any there.
In Kidapawan City, Jerome Aba, spokesman of Moro human rights group Suara Bangsamoro, told The Standard that 600 farmers still remain inside the Spottwoods United Methodist Church in Kidapawan City, just waiting for trucks to pick them up so they can go home.
Aba, in a text message, confirmed that 1,125 farmers were given 25 kilos of rice on Wednesday from the donations of various individuals and groups.
While hearings were being conducted in Davao City, Philippine National Police Director General Ricardo Marquez announced in Manila that Tagum, the police provincial director of North Cotabato who managed the bloody dispersal of farmers, has been formally relieved of his post.
“This is a matter of procedure during an investigation,” Marquez said.
Under questioning at the Senate hearing in Davao City, Tagum said nobody gave the command to open fire. He also said that firing warning shots is not allowed—a reason why he used a megaphone to warn the protesters.
Marquez said that there has already been an acknowledgment that some police personnel opened fire on the protesters during the dispersal and that the investigation by a PNP fact-finding team he had ordered created would “found out their reasons for using their firearms.”
But Cayetano cited Section 10 of the Batas Pambansa 880 saying that “the members of the law enforcement contingent shall not carry any kind of firearms but may be equipped with baton or riot sticks, shields, crash helmets with visor, gas masks, boots or ankle high shoes with shin guards.”
Also on Thursday, the camp of Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel Roxas II slammed Cayetano, a vice presidential aspirant himself for “politicizing” the Kidapawan probe.
Cayetano, along with Senator Aquilino Pimentel III and Senator Teofisto Guingona III, a senatorial candidate running under the LP banner, is leading the ongoing probe. With Sandy Araneta
“We are concerned that the Senate hearing about Kidapawan might become political, especially since the senators involved are either candidates or are working in the campaigns of other presidentiables,” Rep. Barry Gutierrez said in a statement.
Cayetano, during the reopening of the Mamasapano probe told another presidential aspirant Senator Grace Poe in January to inhibit herself from the probe to avoid politicizing the process/
“The farmers should not be used again for political ends. We hope the truth shall prevail so we can have real justice. This is the time to seek solutions to help our farmers, not the time to point fingers, or to grandstand,” Gutierrez added.
The Kabataan partylist group on Thursday vowed to file criminal, civil, and administrative charges against local government officials, including Kidapawan City Mayor Joseph Evangelista, the governor Mendoz, officials of the Philippine National Police, and even Alcala for the government’s failed response to El Niño that led to the bloody dispersal in Kidapawan last April 1.
Kabataan party-list Rep. Terry Ridon said the government’s slow action led to the Kidapawan incident.
“Almost a week after the massacre, the government has yet to own up to killing the farmer-protesters. We are intent on filing all probable criminal charges against the perpetrators, including local officials Evangelista and Mendoza,” Ridon said at a news conference at the House of Representatives.
Ridon said the excessive use of force that led to the death of the farmers is a crime that should not go unpunished, much less whitewashed.
The militant League of Filipino Students (LFS) demanded that President Aquino be questioned by the Senate, claiming that his administration was in the midst of a “colossal coverup.”
Students belonging to the LFS and the Kabataan party-list held a lightning rally in front of Malacañang’s Gate 7 Thursday morning to protest the “coverup.”
“Instead of granting justice for the victims of the violent dispersal and giving the needs of the farmers, Aquino’s cohorts are focused on discrediting the legitimate demands of the farmers and dismissing the root cause of their demands,” saidChristoper Bañez, LFS national chairman. – With Sandy Araneta