1st of three parts
TANDAG City, Surigao del Sur––The two-day Senate probe on killings here ended Friday afternoon with senators Teofisto Guingona III and Aquilino Pimentel III echoing the call of indigenous people, church and local government leaders to arrest, disarm and disband the “Magahat-Bagani” paramilitary group that has been repeatedly accused of sowing terror in several towns. But the Bishop of Tandag is still waiting for answers to critical questions about the “apparent unholy alliance between the military and the paramilitary which the military vehemently denies.” On Thursday, Tandag Bishop Nereo Odchimar told the Senate probe on Lumad killings called for by the Committees on Justice and Human Rights, and Cultural Communities that he was “baffled” why, despite the military’s denials of an alliance, Marcial Belandres, one of the leaders of the paramilitary group and principal suspect in the October 2014 killing of Manobo teacher Henry Alameda and Aldren Dumaguit, was among three persons presented as Datus in a press conference in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City on Sept. 15. Belandres cleared the military of alleged collusion with the paramilitary group and instead pointed to the New People’s Army (NPA) as the perpetrators of the killings and harassments. The press conference came two weeks after the September 1 attack on Sitio Han-ayan, Diatagon, Lianga where Emerito Samarca, executive director of an alternative learning center, Lumad leader Dionel Campos and his cousin Bello Sinzo were killed early morning of Sept . 1 by armed men known in the area as “Magahat-Bagani,” allegedly with soldiers from the 75th and 36th Infantry Battalions. The Army Board of Inquiry said a military patrol was about a hundred meters away from the basketball court where the paramilitary group of about 20 held hostage at gunpoint about a hundred civilians, including women and children, but the patrol leader, a fresh graduate from the Philippine Military Academy, reportedly claimed they could not engage the armed group despite an order from their superiors, allegedly for fear of harming the civilians. The Philippine National Police (PNP) has filed a complaint for multiple murder, arson, robbery and grave threats at the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office in Lianga town against the borthers Bobby and Loloy Tejero, Garito Layno, and several John Does. The attack triggered the evacuation of some 3,000 residents from Han-ayan and 26 other villages in the towns of Lianga, San Agustin, San Miguel, Marihatag and Tago, who are now occupying the Sports Center within the Provincial Capitol compound in Tandag City. Han-ayan residents at the evacuation center said the armed men warned they would return to “massacre” them. (Another wave of evacuees from Barangay Mahaba in Marihatag fled to the municipal gymnasium on Thursday, the first day of the Senate probe here, following an armed encounter believed to be between the military and the NPA, and the alleged sighting of Bobby Tejero, one of three identified killers in the Sept. 1 attack in Han-ayan). “Irony of ironies, this Marcial (Belandres) was one of three Datus brought to Camp Aguinaldo, given the opportunity to clear the military of any connivance,” said Bishop Odchimar, who served as president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines from 2009 to 2011. Belandres was identified as among Alameda’s killers by Alameda’s wife Zenaida, who testified at the Senate probe. Odchimar said Belandres was also named in a January 2015 agreement to disarm and disband the paramilitay group led by Marcos Bocales, Belandres and a certain Calpit. The agreement was signed by representatives of displaced residents, local government and military and police officials. Sen. Guingona later asked the public not to be surprised as he himself was surprised when a member of his staff approached him while Alameda’s wife was testifying, that Belandres was with a group of Lumads who went to see him at the Senate on Sept. 16 and even had a photograph with him. Guingona said he told the group who wanted to talk to him about what was happening in Surigao del Sur to testify at the Senate probe here. Belandres did not show up in the hearing but his companion in the Camp Aguinaldo press conference, Datu Rico Macat, testified. The visit of Belandres’ group in the Senate came a day after their press conference and two days after Guingona delivered a privilege speech urging the Senate to conduct an investigation on the killings and harassments here and to “restore the rule of law in Surigao.” In his pirivlege speech, Guingona said he wanted answers to these questions: “No. 1, Why did the armed forces not do anything?; No. 2, Why are the police not doing anything also when they have armed men knocking on doors of civilians?”
