Maguindanao Massacre Story

The theory on the Maguindanao Massacre is that politics is the main reason why it took
place. Then, what is politics? Is it the way people interact with each other for the purpose of
governance? Is it the chain of events for the administration of political affairs? The, the
Philippine government must do something about the Maguindanao Massacre. It has been said
that man by nature is a political animal. Then, maybe, the animalistic killings in Maguindanao
explains the theory. An alien like me must learn that this world is not a safe place to live.

As of today, 57 dead people has been unearthed in the place where the incident took
place. The Maguindanao Massacre was done in such a way that its victims will be buried after
being executed. News reports would mention that a hundred people kidnapped the victims and
killed them. The victims include women and women who had roles to do in such fateful day had
they escaped the brutal killings. Some of them are drivers, journalists, lawyers, housewives,
sons, daughters, and even passersby who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The
international community condemned what happened in Maguindanao like the United Nations
and other international government organizations and even private individuals. As an alien, I
finally understood that hell could be found just anywhere.

Mangudadatu: ‘Ampatuans Made Business Out of Elections’

MANILA — While the cries for justice for the victims of the Ampatuan massacre have been
amplified many times over — by the media, human-rights advocates, progressive groups, the general
public and the international community -– there is one person whose voice should ring louder. Esmael
“Toto” Mangudadatu, vice mayor of Buluan, Maguindanao, and candidate for the province’s gubernatorial
seat, lost a wife, two sisters, and several other relatives and friends — including at least 30 journalists, one
of whom, he said, “was like more than a brother” to him.
His wife Genalyn was leading a convoy to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Shariff
Aguak to file his certificate of candidacy. The convoy was waylaid in broad daylight by some 100 armed
men led by Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. Several bodies of those in the convoy, as well as those
of motorists who were just passing by, were discovered later that day, and more remains were unearthed in
the next few days. The dead included some 30 journalists and two lawyers.
Reached by phone in his hometown, Mangudadatu sounded very much composed, but he expressed his
desire for justice in no uncertain terms. While placing his trust in the government and the authorities, he
also expressed hope that “there will be no whitewash” in the case.
Beyond the Ampatuan Massacre, the interview touches on the prospects that he sees for
Maguindanao, as well as what he claims to know about how the Ampatuans wielded power over their
province.

Below is the full text of the interview:

How optimistic are you that you will get justice for what happened in Ampatuan?
That is what we are aspiring for. We cannot really be sure. There were the declaration of martial
law and the warrantless arrests, but we know that they have many lawyers. But I trust the government and
other authorities and I hope there will be no whitewash in this case so that we can obtain justice for my
loved ones, my sisters, relatives, and my friends in the media.
Do you think the arrests of the Ampatuans already signal the end of their rule
over Maguindanao?
That is the beginning of the end of their power, which they stole from the government, and also of
their enjoyment of the riches that they stole from the people.
Is it true that your family supported the Ampatuans in previous elections?
Though we were allies before, when Ampatuan Sr. was still our governor, I never supported them.
My siblings all know that, they know who I am, and how vehemently I had opposed the Ampatuans’ wishes.
I always advised the leaders in our province not to let themselves be swayed by the Ampatuans, because
they were only employing deceit to gain more and more power. They made business out of the votes. They
extorted money out of the senatorial candidates who were campaigning in Maguindanao by selling votes to
them.
What prospects do you now see for Maguindanao, in terms of politics and
governance?
If we win in the May 2010 elections, we will carry out a program of reform — total reform for our
province. First, the lands that the Ampatuans grabbed from the people of our province, if possible, will be
returned to them. Second, reform in education, because one of the main causes of disquiet in our province
is the lack of education; about 95 percent of Maguindanaoans do not complete college. Those are our big
problems here, and if these are remedied, we can lessen by up to 70 percent – if not eliminate – the
poverty and disquiet here in Maguindanao.
How optimistic are you about winning in the elections, given that for a long time
the military supported the Ampatuans?
We are trying our best to win in the elections, and with the help of our friends from media, the
people of our province, plus the help of the authorities, I hope we can have peace; and we need elections,
not selection. The one who selects during elections, Andal Ampatuan Sr., is out of the way and is now in
custody, and we hope there will be real elections in our province.
On a personal note, how do you feel about the deaths of those who were part of
the convoy, including the 30 journalists?
First of all, it is painful to lose a loved one. Second, my sisters and other relatives were part of the
convoy –- there were more than 10 of them. Third, my friends from the media were there and their deaths
are very painful to me; one of them was very close to me, he was like more than a brother to me.
Is there any truth to the reports that even before Nov. 23, you had been receiving
threats from the Ampatuans?
They had been threatening us for a long time. The Ampatuans don’t want anyone challenging
them. They kill anyone who challenges them. They recently did precisely that.
Did you know there was such a threat when the convoy proceeded?
You know, what the Ampatuans want is to make franchises out of elective positions in
Maguindanao. But we are in a democracy, and there should be no obstacle to anyone running for public
office as long as he is a bona fide resident of the place where he is running.
What led you to still run under the Lakas-Kampi coalition, the same party that had
fielded the Ampatuans?
I have been with Lakas-Kampi ever since, and now the Ampatuans have been expelled from the
party. There was no one running for governor when my loved ones died. My loyalties are really with Lakas-
Kampi.

Philippines massacre: The story behind the accused

Ampatuan clan

The Philippines massacre of 46 people on Monday on Mindanao appears to

have been politically motivated, with fingers pointing to a powerful local clan.
 Many Filipinos are pointing to the massacre of 46 unarmed people in the southern
Philippines province of Maguindanao Monday as evidence of the deadly influence of a dynastic
clan that has been nurtured by the central government for almost 20 years. Nothing is yet proven,
but survivors of the attack, national politicians, and police officials all say the likely perpetrators
were loyalists of Andal Ampatuan, a former provincial governor who has used his private army
to control politics in the province for a decade. Mr. Ampatuan was term-limited out of the
governorship this year. In his three election campaigns, no local politician dared to run against
him.

His son, Andal Jr., was gearing up for a similarly unopposed run to replace his father. But
Ismael Mangudadatu, a former ally of the Ampatuans, had other ideas. On Monday morning, he
dispatched a convoy of cars (mostly women and journalists, on the theory that would afford
some protection against attack) to file papers in the provincial capital Shariff Aguak to run
against the younger Ampatuan. Mr. Mangudadatu remained at home.

The people in the convoy never made it. Instead, they were waylaid when they came to
Ampatuan (the clan's stronghold), dragged from their cars, and summarily executed. Survivors
alleged to reporters in the Philippines that Andal Jr. led the gunmen.

Many of the victims were buried in mass graves that survivors said appeared to have been
dug before the assault. Among the dead were Mangudadatu's wife, Genalyn, and two of his
sisters. At least 12 of the victims were Filipino journalists. The provincial police chief was
sacked and a government spokesman said local police officers also appeared to be present during
the murders.

The murders led Philippines president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to declare a state of
emergency in the province. Her government is now dealing with a looming scandal, with
opposition politicians asking how the murders could have happened in broad daylight and on a
major road regularly patrolled by soldiers and police. The attacks appear to show the problem
with her government's tolerance of warlords.

Warlordism has been endemic for generations in the Philippines, from the main northern
island of Luzon to Mindanao, the largely Muslim island that hosts at least three armed separatist
groups. Mindanao also has freelance kidnap-for-ransom gangs and protection rackets tied to the
large army and police presence.

The US got its first extended taste of counterinsurgency on Mindanao, where Moro
fighters centered in the powerful local clans tied up US forces for 14 years as America sought to
colonize the country (the Moro rebellion ended in 1913). The island's Muslim population has had
an uneasy relationship with the central government ever since, and two major separatist groups –
the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – were born
there.

In 1990, the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was created for the
Muslim provinces of the island, ostensibly to give the local population more power over their
own affairs and suck the life out of Mindanao's various insurgencies. But in the 1990s, the
Armed Forces of the Philippines continued to aggressively hunt down local militants using the
paramilitary loyalists, much as similar civilian forces were created by Colombia's military in the
1960s. One paramilitary leader who worked with the Army's 6th Infantry Division was Andal
Ampatuan.
 With his close military ties, Ampatuan's rise has been meteoric. He has served in the
Philippines Congress and as the governor of Maguindanao. His family's rise to political
dominance has closely tracked that of Arroyo, who became president in 2001. Since Ampatuan
first became governor in 2000, five of the province's towns have been renamed for his relatives,
including the provincial capital now known as Shariff Aguak, after his father.

In a long 2008 report on the Ampatuan clan's influence and strength, reporter Jaileen

Jimeno wrote that "only one family wields real power in Maguindanao: the Ampatuans, led by...
acknowledged patriarch, Governor Andal Ampatuan." She quotes Michael Mastura, a former
congressman from Maguindanao, as saying of Ampatuan's local power, "the word ‘impunity’
does not even suit it.”
He has cultivated the relationship with the presidential palace by running a reliable election
machine in his area. Ampatuan was widely alleged to have rigged the local vote in the 2004
election, which saw ARMM vote overwhelmingly for Arroyo. In 2005, his son Zaldy became
ARMM governor. In Zaldy's last reelection, in 2008, he received 90 percent of the vote. In 2007,
all 12 candidates whom Arroyo had backed for senator in Maguindanao won. After that election,
local school administrator Musa Dimasidsing told a national commission on electoral fraud that
he'd personally witnessed ballot stuffing. He was murdered with a shot to the head soon after.
Mr. Dimasidsing's murder remains unsolved.

In 2006, Arroyo issued Executive Order 546, which legalized the then-informal, and
technically illegal, paramilitary groups of men like Ampatuan. "The (Philippines National
Police) is hereby authorized to deputize the [paramilitaries] as force multipliers in the
implementation of the peace and order plan," Arroyo's order reads. The order's effect was to
institutionalize paramilitary groups like Ampatuan's across the country.

At least four of Ampatuan's sons are also town mayors and most of them have gunmen of
their own. Estimates of the size of his own personal militia range from 200-500. He often travels
in a convoy with "technicals," pickup trucks with 50-caliber machine guns mounted on the load
bed, armed by loyalists and family members.

"Arroyo returns the favors by letting (The Ampatuans') rule Maguindanao like a fiefdom," Jarius
Bondoc wrote in The Philippine Star. "All economic initiatives need the Ampatuans’ assent;
state funds are released through them. Even the posting of police and military generals are
cleared with them."
Ampatuan has been a target of violence himself. In 2006, he survived an ambush that he said was
laid by the MILF. The group denied trying to kill Ampatuan, but the former governor's personal
gunmen have often fought with the MILF. The group said it had killed 20 of Ampatuan's
militiamen in a firefight in 2006.

More violence could be in the offing. Though the government is hoping that the state of
emergency will tamp down the situation, the Mangudadatus are powerful in their own right.
Blood feuds in Mindanao traditionally run long, and hot.
 Philippines: The Maguindanao Massacre
Monday, 30 November 2009, 1:02 pm
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission

Philippines: How Could The 'Maguindanao Massacre' Been Allowed To Happen?

("We don’t care about it, we don’t know about it" – the Acting Head of the Provincial
Police)

As it has been widely reported, 57 people-including two human rights lawyers and 30
journalists - were slaughtered on November 23 in Maguindanao, a province in central
Mindanao. While much of the stories and worldwide condemnation focused on the number
of, and manner of the deaths - describing them as gruesome, barbaric and animalistic
amongst others things, the Filipino people, even in this country's war-torn southern part, still
grapple in disbelief as to how it could have happened.

It is incomprehensible, not only to the Filipino people, but the international community
as to how, in an area with a modicum of governance and law enforcement and the right to
the protection of life could have been so easily dismissed in a democratic state. How is it
possible that a group of over 100 armed men, reportedly led by a scion of a powerful
political clan, the Ampatuans, blocked a convoy of vehicles of over 50 people in broad
daylight, took them to a remote hilly area, executed them and then buried them in shallow
graves?

There were indications that the massacre was premeditated and thoroughly planned; for
example, the graves where the 57 dead bodies had been buried had already been excavated
using a government-owned backhoe. Its engine was still running when the soldiers arrived at
the scene of the massacre after they had received reports of the incident. When the soldiers
arrived, dead bodies littered the scene, vehicles used in the convoy were riddled with bullets
and three of the vehicles had been flattened and buried together with the dead bodies.
(Photo: Concepcion “Connie” Brizuela, lawyer, victim; source: Inqiurer.net)

Before the massacre happened, some journalists had already received information that
should they persist in covering the filing of Certificates of Candidacy of (CoC) of Esmael
Mangudadatu, they would be killed and buried. However, because they were given
assurance by Alfredo Cayton, commanding general of the Army's 6th Infantry Division, that
they could push through telling them that area is safe, the group decided to proceed. The
group also had seriously discussed matters on security arrangements for two hours before
leaving. It was unfortunate though that organisers and the group of journalists may have
underestimated the situation. Threats of this nature are common in this part of the country.

Mangudadatu is a bitter political rival of one of Ampatuan's scions, Andal Ampatuan Jr,
incumbent town mayor of Datu Unsay, a town named after him by his father, Andal
Ampatuan Sr., who is also the incumbent provincial governor of Maguindanao. The younger
Ampatuan is now considered the prime suspect in the slaughter, according to witnesses.
After his arrest on Thursday, November 26, he is being held in detention at the National
Bureau of Investigation (NBI) in Manila.

The carnage left Esmael's wife, Genalyn; his two sisters, Eden and Farida Sabdula;
several of his political supporters; two human rights lawyers, Concepcion Brizuela and
Cynthia Oquendo; and 30 journalists dead. Brizuela and Oquendo were assisting
Mangudadatus' wife, Genalyn, to file the CoC on behalf of her husband at the provincial
election office in Maguindanao while the journalists were covering the would-be filing. The
event, in the local context, would have been a big story for local journalists as the filing was
an act upon which the Mangudadatus, also a powerful political clan in the adjacent province,
Sultan Kudarat, would be challenging the Ampatuans for a gubernatorial post.

The younger Ampatuan is reported to have been groomed by his father to run as
governor for the May 2010 general elections. The elder Ampatuan is the close ally of the
Philippine President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her party; and had served as the
governor of Maguindanao, a province under the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao
(ARMM), for three consecutive terms as governor. Three of Ampatuans’ political leaders
were expelled from the President's political party because of the massacre.
 The Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus are bitter rivals and powerful political clans in
the local politics. In this southern part of the country, the notion of governing for the
'common good of constituents, good governance, rule of law and human rights and
democracy' has hardly ever existed. The politicians' motivation in running for public office
is for protecting their territory, expanding their influence and cementing their de
facto absolute control into the affairs of the local government--from the civilian
administration, to the security forces. The security forces were there to serve the local
political elite, rather than enforcing law and order.

In Shariff Aguak, the capital of Maguindanao, the display of wealth and power can be
illustrated by the huge palaces that these political leaders of the province have built,
dwarfing the town and shanties of their constituents. The province is one of the poorest in
Mindanao, and is a long term recipient of foreign development aid. The constituents in
remote municipalities have been for decades victims of massive protracted displacements,
killings and abductions and summary executions either by the government or military forces
in the decades-old conflict in Mindanao. Thus, the people's threshold to violence is higher
than other place, but the extent of this massacre is, even for them difficult to comprehend.

That the alleged mastermind, the younger Ampatuan, was reported to have been able to
command and have given the order to kill the victims is well established and illustrates the
local government's policy in funding, training and recruiting militia forces. The Civilian
Volunteer Organisation (CVO) is one of the government's militia forces and is also accused
of having been involved in the Maguindanao massacre. The functioning of the CVO should
have been under the control and oversight of the Philippine National Police (PNP); however,
the existing system is so heavily politicized, effectively making the police authorities
underdogs of the politicians.

The top local executive has the authority to expel, appoint and recommend, for
example, who should be the head of the provincial police and the head of the town police.
The local executives also decide whether or not the local police and its security unit should
be given budget allocations from the local government's coffer for their operation. This
deliberately brings the policemen and security units under the politician's control and
influence. The extent of the policemen's control by the politicians has been affirmed and
shown when Esmael, upon learning of the massacre, was told by the acting head of the
Maguindanao provincial police when he sought his assistance that: "Wala kaming paki-alam
d'yan, hindi namin alam 'yan (“We don’t care about it, we don’t know it”).

After the massacre, the PNP had to relieve six of its top officials in Maguindanao for
their alleged complicity--the chief of police of Shariff Aguak and Ampatuan towns and
three other police inspectors from their position. According to the PNP though, they are not
yet considered as suspects, but reports indicate that one of them, was seen by the witnesses
to be present at the scene when the victims were executed. Also, it would be difficult to
accept that these top policemen would not know of the presence of heavily armed men in
their area of jurisdiction. The national highways of these towns where the convoy passed
also had check points of only few hundred meter distance from one place to the other -
either set up by soldiers, policemen or militia forces - thus, it is hard to believe that they
would not know of the movement of armed men, unless they were complicit or had been co-
opted.

When the convoy was blocked and the victims subsequently executed, reason dictates
that the victims may have thought the perpetrators would not do such horrendous acts. They
unfortunately walked to the grave virtually blindfolded for reasons that their numbers and
composition - there were over 50 of them mostly women – that the town mayor who was the
prime suspect, the government's militia forces and armed civilians; and the policemen, who
were seen by witnesses at the crime scene were all present.

The killing of 30 journalists, mostly local journalists, is the largest number of deaths in
a single incident in the Philippines' recent history. It has virtually crippled the press freedom
in this part of the country. The fight for press freedom and right to information itself is a
notion that local journalists had struggled to fight for. Before the massacre, some of the
journalists who were reporting on the corrupt practices of the government officials in these
provinces were themselves subjected to threats. At least two journalists had already been
killed in the past, one of whom was Marlene Esperat in October 2006 in Tacurong, Sultan
Kudarat. (Photo: journalist victims, from left to right: Marites Cablitas, Gina Dela Cruz and
Marife Montaño; source MindaNews)

As one of the eyewitnesses to the massacre said, they were just following orders when
the alleged mastermind ordered them to shoot and kill not only the relatives of the
Mangudadatus but also the human rights lawyers, the journalist; and all of those who had
joined the convoy. This eyewitness had come out in an exclusive television interview but is
said to have gone into hiding. There are also several other persons who had witnessed and
survived the massacre but are too frightened to come forward.

The plight of the witnesses and the survivors also exposed the realities of the absence of
any protection mechanism within the country. At least three of the journalists who survived
the massacre sent feelers out to the Department of Justice (DoJ) informing them of what
information they had to help the investigation and prosecution of the case, but they (the
DoJ) paid no attention, according to the survivor's family. Like the eyewitness, these
survivors too had to take their own security measures to protect themselves. It is also not
practical to seek for a police escort since one of the policemen relieved from his post was
once assigned in the survivors' hometown; and given the small community of journalists
there--who often covers the police and military beats--even without exposing their names,
those who want them dead know where they can be located.

Also, how could the survivors consider asking for police protection when, in fact, prior
to covering the filing of CoCs the Mangudadatus, had already sought police and military
protection. Such request was rejected. The military had to excuse themselves saying they
were unable to provide escorts because their troops were deployed somewhere and that
providing escorts is primarily a police duty; while the policemen to whom the group had
sought security escort for the convoy turned out to have reportedly were complicit or had
taken part to the massacre.