Police checkpoints spoil anti-Sona rally

By NITZ ARANCON
and LITO RULONA
Correspondents

GOVERNMENT security forces may have allowed protest rallies during President Duterte’s State-of-the-Nation Address near the Batasan Pambansa yesterday but their counterparts here made sure protesters could not converge in Iligan City where they planned a huge rally.

Wildon Barros, chairman of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in northern Mindanao, said it took more than an hour for their contingent to pass every checkpoint in their convoy from this city to Iligan yesterday.

At a checkpoint in Amoros, El Salvador, Barros said the police took pictures of each of the 2,000-strong contingent. All of the bags of each of the contingent were checked.

“Grabe gyud ka higpit. Giabtan gud mi’g sobra duha ka oras,” lamented Barros.

The Bayan contingent was riding a convoy of 38 vehicles, Barros said.

Prior to their ordeal at the Amoros checkpoint, the entire contingent was also flagged down and held in Opol, Misamis Oriental.

The contingent was released at about 10 am, yesterday, only after the protesters staged a short rally in front of the checkpoint.

As of 5 pm, the Bayan contingent is still stuck at the Laguindingan airport junction.

“Magsabot sa ’mi ini kay dili man mi makabalik sa Cagayan de Oro og dili pud mi makalahos sa Iligan kay grabe gyud ka trapik,” Barros said.

At noontime, there was no sign of a protest rally at the city plaza in Iligan.

The plaza was guarded by Army personnel who were seen driving a few activists away.

In the afternoon, a group of people came to the plaza but they were mostly from the city government. June Lino Bacus of the city information office said it was a prayer rally in support of Duterte and Mayor Celso Regencia.

In Opol town in Misamis Oriental earlier in the day, police held a convoy of some two thousand activists who had planned to take part in rally in time for Duterte’s Sona. The rallyists, organized by the militant group Bayan, were held from 8 am to 10:14 am.

The vehicular traffic flow on the highway in Opol town slowed down, resulting in a traffic jam.

Chief Insp. Randy Anito, Opol police chief, said the rallyists were in trucks, buses, jeepneys, vans and other vehicles.

They composed a contingent from northern Mindanao who were to take part in the “Mindanao-wide People’s Sona 2017” protest rally in Iligan City yesterday.

The roadblock prompted protesters to step down from the vehicles to stage an unplanned demonstration in Opol.

“Giharang man kami, ma-o nga dinhi nalang kami mopadayag sa  among mga da-otang sintiminto batok  sa  administration ni President Duterte,” said Francisco Pagayaman, local spokesman of the group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay).

Lawyer Czarina Musni of the Union of People’s Lawyers in Mindanao, said the Opol police allowed the protesters to pass through following about two hours of negotiations.

Musni said the police only gave in when protest organizers agreed to list down the names of the protesters and for them to show IDs.

Chief Insp. Anito said it was part of the government’s martial law security measures.

“OK ra kay masabtan man pud nato,  nga mao man kana ang instruction sa military ug ato man pud  nga nasabtan nga mao man kana ang  kahimtang karon sa martial law,” Musni said.

But another group that wanted to help evacuees complained that it was also subjected to the same police treatment earlier.

“This is the real face of martial law.”

With this, the coordinator of a group of missionaries summed up her dismay over what she described as the profiling of citizens helping in the psychosocial intervention work for Maranaos traumatized by the fightings in strife-torn Marawi City.

Ailene Villarosa, rural poor advocacy work coordinator of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines in northern Mindanao, complained that her group was held by authorities at a checkpoint in Barangay Hinaplanon, Iligan City, over the weekend.

Last weekend, Villarosa said her group was composed of participants to the “Youth Peace Camp” who went to Iligan to help the Department of Social Welfare and Development in facilitating psychosocial interventions for Maranao evacuees in time for a government-sponsored feeding program in Barangay Mandulog, Iligan.

Villarosa said officers, manning a checkpoint, blocked the convoy and demanded to see a permit for the activity.

She said the scheduled psychosocial intervention activity was given the green light by Social Welfare Undersecretary Hope Hervilla but seeing no document, police started profiling the group and its members.

She said the group was subsequently allowed to pass through after the police profiled her and members of her group and government social workers.

Villarosa said the police also supervised them while they were conducting the psychosocial interventions.

After 2 pm, she said, the police insisted that they leave Iligan.

“Movements are restricted, and everything is controlled not by civilian government authorities but by the armed state forces. This should not be the case even with the extended martial law. It only suspends the writ of habeas corpus. It does not take away our rights to move freely in our own homeland,” reads a statement released by the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines. (with reports from nora sorino, sita asequia and frank dosdos jr.)