‘Mistaken identity arrest’ inexcusable

LET us call a spade a spade. The supposed “arrest” on Sunday of Davao Today columnist Fidelina Margarita Valle in Laguindingan, Misamis Oriental was not a lawful operation but a criminal abduction of a journalist.

Valle, a veteran community journalist and development worker, was arrested by operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) Region 9 at 10:30 am Sunday while waiting for her flight home to Davao City.

She was forcibly taken using a warrant of arrest issued against Elsa Renton alias Tina Maglaya and Fidelina Margarita Valle.

Renton, an alleged communist party member, has standing warrants of arrest for arson and multiple murder with quadruple frustrated murder and damage to government property.

Valle was released at around 8:45 pm, after nine hours of detention in Pagadian City, about 200 kilometers away from Laguindingan Airport.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines strongly condemns Valle’s abduction and the CIDG’s violation of her basic rights.

How else do authorities explain why Ms. Valle was held incommunicado for hours even as the police issued a statement saying she was facing multiple crimes from a decade ago, only to admit they had the wrong person?

This is the equivalent of “shoot now, ask questions later.”

And the truth is that Ms. Valle’s abduction could have had dire, even fatal, consequences. There is no lack of victims of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances to drive home this point.

We demand that the police and military personnel involved in this inexcusable travesty and their superiors be prosecuted and punished to the fullest extent of the law. –National Union of Journalists of the Philippines

‘We Reject Capuyan’

WE, national minorities under Sandugo Movement of Moro and Indigenous Peoples for Self-Determination strongly denounce President Rodrigo Duterte’s appointment of retired Col. Capuyan as new chief of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

Capuyan  headed  the national secretariat of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF). He was also the presidential adviser for indigenous peoples’ concerns in 2018. In 2008, he was the commander of Task Force Gantangan, a special group formed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines specifically to set-up  Lumad paramilitary groups in Mindanao as part of the Gloria Arroyo’s counter-insurgency program, Oplan Bantay Laya. These paramilitary groups that include  the Alamara, Magahat-Bagani and other groups remain today and  are responsible for the murder  of many Lumad leaders opposed to the entry of mining companies and agro-corporations in the ancestral lands.

The appointment of Capuyan speaks loudly of the NTF to End Local Communist Armed Conflict that in fact targets the indigenous peoples organizations and leaders. These attacks against us with Capuyan at the helm of the NCIP will further intensify as if we are the enemies.

The appointment of another soldier in a civilian post shows that the Duterte government is mustering all its agencies against. This is the core of the “Whole of Nation Approach” in the government’s Oplan Kapayaan counter-insurgency program. These are instruments that Capuyan and Duterte’s other military minions will use hand in hand with direct military actions.

Capuyan played a major role in  the  reign of terror  in Mindanao. Now as head of the NCIP, he can legitimize further militarization and terrorize  IP communities nationwide.

Capuyan’s appointment is very timely now that China-funded projects are being railroaded in areas of the indigenous peoples communities. As NCIP chief, Capuyan can easily coerce communities to approve  a fake free prior and informed consent (FPIC) for the construction of the Chico River Water Pump Project in Pinukpok, Kalinga and  the  Kaliwa Dam Project in General Nakar, Quezon and Tanay, Rizal. These projects are strongly opposed by the affected local residents and IP communities.

Capuyan may be Duterte’s perfect man for dirty jobs. But just like past counter-insurgency programs, it will fail. The NCIP has been long exposed as an anti-indigenous peoples agency. What Duterte and the AFP do not understand is that if the root causes of unrest continue to exist, there will always be a resistance. Our continued existence as indigenous peoples and Bangsamoro is proof of our determined resistance as a people. We will continue to resist attacks against us and the rest of the Filipino masses until genuine self-determination and development are achieved. –Aya Santos, Sandugo Movement of Moro and Indigenous Peoples for Self-Determination

No Excuse for Tulfo

THERE can be no excuse for Erwin Tulfo’s utter lack of ethics and scruples in publicly insulting Secretary Rolando Bautista simply for not being able to immediately answer his demand for an interview.

No, this has nothing to do with Bautista, for Tulfo’s fault would be no less grave had he spewed his venom on a street beggar.

We do not dispute Tulfo’s assertion that criticizing government officials is part of a journalist’s job. But the vitriol he heaped on Bautista clearly had nothing to do with whether or not the secretary was doing his job and everything to do with Tulfo’s exaggerated sense of entitlement.

The issue is Tulfo’s brand of “journalism,” and we are using the term very liberally since what he and his ilk practice bear little resemblance to the profession of truth, which, ironically, is what this administration seems to prefer even as it vilifies those who do their work seriously and credibly.

Indeed, the Tulfos of this world seem to have found the perfect niche within the infrastructure of a government that has established itself as the foremost purveyor of disinformation and has run roughshod over most, if not all, our people’s basic rights and liberties, although this particular Tulfo appears to have outshone the rest when even the director general of the Philippine Information Agency called him out for being “a pretentious and poisonous media personality whose only leverage is his last name and airtime in government radio.”

Let us see how this administration deals with the mess.

But we do hope, whatever the outcome, that the media industry in general finally realizes that the revenues such unethical and irresponsible muckraking admittedly bring in can never compensate for the damage “journalists” like Erwin Tulfo have caused the profession and, most especially, the people whose lives and reputations they so cavalierly sully. –National Union of Journalists of the Philippines