Peace of the Dead

A graveyard’s peace drapes the countrysides of Bicol. The muteness of peasant huts, the hush of wary gestures in the farms, the tautness of villagers’ faces – all these bespeak the dread that has crept across the barrios of the region. This silence is the dark peace of Oplan Bayanihan.

Now entering its third year, the government’s “internal peace and security plan” (a moderation for “counter-insurgency”), patterned after the US Counterinsurgency Guide of 2009, has for its ultimate objective the reduction of the “capabilities of internal armed threats…to a level that they can no longer threaten the stability of the state and civil authorities can ensure the safety and well-being of the Filipino people.” In the Bicol region, with the government having only one formidable armed opponent, Oplan Bayanihan means to “render the NPA irrelevant.” The Philippine Army’s 9^th Infantry Division initiates the campaign in the region.

For the Bicolano masses however, Oplan Bayanihan only means thus: Terror and Deceit,  a two-pronged spear of brutality and psywar being thrust at the people leading to further impoverishment in a land already belonging to the country’s four poorest regions.

Terror and Deceit: A Predicament in Pairs

In the province of Albay, Oplan Bayanihan’s misleading “Peace and Development” operations have for more than two years been ravaging the interiors of Guinobatan town, and has turned a cluster of villages in the second district into a seemingly enormous military complex with large deployment of Philippine Army troops and CAFGU paramilitaries. These state forces, sustained by public money, essentially come to be private security forces for companies undertaking the construction of an international airport, and also of major eco-tourism and residential projects in the area.

In Camarines Norte, the 49^th Infantry Battalion’s “Peace and Development Teams” (PDTs) disrupt the once tranquil lives of the people of Labo town’s 13 barrios – Domagmang, Malaya, Malibago, Malatap, Anameam, Macogon, Bagong Silang II, Pag-asa, Maligaya, Calabasa, Excivan, Daguit, and Maot.

Likewise, 12 villages in the town of Bato in Camarines Sur likewise suffer the afflictions of military presence. The villages of Payak, Pagatpatan, Sooc, Cotmon, Cristo Rey, Coguit, Mangga, Lubong, Salvacion, Cawacagan, Del Rosario, and Caricot have also been rounded up by the Philippine Army’s 42^nd IB for Oplan Bayanihan’s storm of repression.

Villages in the towns of San Miguel, San Andres, and Virac in Catanduanes province share the same fate, as well as those in the boundaries of Bulusan and Barcelona towns in the province of Sorsogon, who have soldiers from the 31^st IB occupying their barangays since September of 2012.

Needless to say, the AFP’s dismal human rights record makes its prolonged presence troubling on the part of villagers. A mere day of government soldiers raking through the countryside already spells fear and anxiety on the farmers to go to their lands, they being accosted with brusque, physical harm, and assaults to their livelihoods such as the stealing of crops and fowls from unguarded farms - thus equating military operations to loss of livelihoods.

But to simply paint a picture of menacing military patrols in the hinterlands of rural villages is to downplay the intent of Oplan Bayanihan’s focused terror. Despite the 9^th ID’s platitudes on “peace and development” and “respect for human rights”, the opposite is what has been taking place. Oplan Bayanihan’s so-called “people-centered approach” is designed to impress upon the peasants the harsh consequences of advocating or supporting just struggles for land, livelihood, and other democratic rights and interests.  PDTs – on the average a squad of soldiers trained in combat, intelligence, and psywar – direct their brunt primarily on peasants and members of progressive organizations in the barrios whom they suspect to be supporters of the New People’s Army (NPA).

Various forms of human rights violations assail the victims of PDTs. From intimidation to physical harm, from illegal detention to unlawful interrogation, from torture to murder – soldiers of the 9^th ID have not run out of methods in repressing Bicolano masses. In the villages of Guinobatan alone, no less than 80 individuals fell prey to the 2^nd IB's PDTs just on its first month in July to August of 2011.

Emelio Odeña, a village watchman of Barangay Balite, had a knife shoved at him by a Sgt. Mariano. Novo Otico of Barangay Pood was hit in the head and legs while under interrogation. Fellow villager Oscar Pardines was hit with a rifle’s butt and was knocked in the stomach by his interrogators led by a Corporal Carpio. Village officials of Bololo and Cabaloaon were harassed into withdrawing their opposition to the PDTs’ presence, and were forced to provide materials and construct dwellings for soldiers. Rodrigo Bosquellos, also of Barangay Balite, was interrogated and illegally detained for seven hours, during which he was also denied any legal counsel and even food. Eli Oguis, a village councilman of Cabaloaon, whom the 2^nd IB put under severe interrogation in August 2011, was later found headless in the muds. The list of savagery displayed by the 2^nd IB in Albay goes on but is also matched elsewhere in the region where Oplan Bayanihan’s PDTs operate.

And as if all these were not terroristic enough, the Philippine Army’s 9^th ID has even placed itself in the people’s midst – stockpiling weapons and occupying public structures as their barracks, and subjugating the people in their own locales of comfort and fellowships. AFP Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Bautista, Oplan Bayanihan’s chief architect, must have perfected in his military experience the thrashing of a people’s dignity that he and his men are now committing human rights violations – the intimidations and tortures, the unlawful detentions and cruelties – the crushing of a people’s spirits – inside barangay halls, daycare centers, chapels, and other public establishments.

All of these makes one thing very clear: that the government’s armed forces have the least respect for International Humanitarian Law which puts a premium on the protection and security of civilians in times of armed conflict; that certainly, it is not the poor and marginalized people in the region or elsewhere that they have come for to serve and protect.

With the 9^th Infantry Division adept in all the functions of a repressive tool, Bicol’s countrysides would most likely illustrate the demise of democratic aspirations, with 9^th ID troops posturing as butchers, but with once stifled Bicolano masses steadily breaking away from their fetters. 

If it is peace the 9^th Infantry Division aims to achieve in Oplan Bayanihan, then it has certainly succeeded in doing so, if the peace it wants is the deadening of villages and the quelling of people’s aspirations.

For indeed, in over two years of the AFP’s campaign, it has not only attacked the people through brute force. It has also pursued to deflect the minds of villagers away from the roots of poverty and conflict, and has strived to distort the people’s thinking towards Oplan Bayanihan’s incredible logic.

Oplan Bayanihan absurdly believes that people are poor only because they believe that they are poor.  Their hardship is only caused by “perceptions of relative deprivation”, and is therefore no reason to protest or take up arms. Oplan Bayanihan clearly insults the people’s judgement in dispelling concrete socio-economic and socio-political concerns such as landlessness, unemployment, and injustice as motivations for dissent and armed resistance. Nonetheless, counter-insurgency fanatics aim to simply change such “perceptions of relative deprivation” through “winning the hearts and minds” of a target community.

Psywar: Altering “Perceptions”

It is in this twisted reasoning that Peace and Development Teams (PDTs) carry out their other tasks. Apart from being initiators of brutality, another focal mission of PDTs is the bombardment of diversionary schemes and even outright lies in an attempt to clear the people’s minds of the root causes of their hardships and just means of attaining progress.

In PDT-infested villages, it is commonplace for soldiers to initiate merry-making activities such as basketball tournaments, village dances and drinking sessions as though these revelries could mask the despondency of hunger that befall peasant homes. Soldiers go around with their paintbrushes beautifying waiting sheds and barangay halls, participating in token tree-planting activities, as if colors could enhance the centuries-old crudeness of production relations in the farms. Soldiers would invite residents in a “boodle-fight” meal, and transfer meager amounts of cellphone loads to students, as though these one-time gestures could provide education for the youth. Truly, the deception of Oplan Bayanihan is as plain as a rabid dog putting on a clown’s face.

Starker forms of psywar are likewise employed. During interrogations, victims are coerced into betraying their neighbors, with PDT operators sowing intrigues in order to ruin the harmonious relationships among villagers. Those who are subjected to questioning are also photographed while being forced to hold rifles, and are made to sign blank sheets of papers. These papers would later turn out to be either waivers of human rights violations, or signed surrender documents. It is noteworthy to add that military officials make a living out of misrepresenting civilians as New People’s Army (NPA) rebel returnees. Government funds supposedly allocated for such are easily pocketed by officers, with scores of peasants from each PDT-infested village being paraded as “former NPA rebels”.

Lastly, Oplan Bayanihan implements murder as the darkest of methods in instilling in the minds of the people to cast off any thought of dissent. As in the deaths of Eli Oguis, Romero Octavo, and Dalmacio dela Punta, their killers intend to ram the grim message head-on. Also, a familiar threat that has apparently become a standard operating procedure for PDT operations resonates in village round ups across the region: “Kapag inabutan namin ang mga NPA sa bahay ninyo, idadamay namin kayo!” (If we chance upon NPAs in your homes, you will not be spared!)

And alas, such wickedness has resulted in the massacre of the Mancera family in Labo town in February of 2012, when indeed, a platoon of the 49^th IB under First Lieutenant Alfie Lee killed two schoolboys and their father, and left their sister severely wounded. Such was also the fate of the Lotino family in Daraga town in Albay. Accused of being NPA supporters, village councilman Wenifredo Lotino was killed together with his wife and a nephew, and the Lotinos’ daughter suffering serious gunshot wounds. In Libmanan town in Camarines Sur, likewise suspected of supporting the NPA, three members of the Bico family, along with their employee, were killed by masked soldiers. Two other witnesses were also killed.

Completing the policy of murder would be the posse of AFP propagandists scurrying towards media organizations to peddle their lies. Oplan Bayanihan being a barrage of brutality and grand psywar, military spokespersons would instinctively disown their crimes and point to the NPA. Common too are assertions that the civilian victims are NPA rebels, or that they were caught in crossfires. Still frequently driveled is to pass off the murders as common crimes, obscuring the methodization of these state murders.

But deceit is an embarrassment shoved in the AFP’s face. Testimonies and evidences belie the falsehoods that accompany each killing, attesting even more to the inclusion of murders in Oplan Bayanihan’s menu. In the extra-judicial killing of Bayan Muna member Rodel Estrellado on February 25, 2011, military reports of his death were already brandished in the media three hours earlier than his abduction which was witnessed by the public.  In Cabaloaon councilman Ely Oguis’ case,  an entanglement of lies caught military spokespersons confused as to which claim to sustain. One military unit claimed that Oguis was killed in an encounter. Another said that he was killed by the NPA for not paying taxes. Still another declared that he was an NPA tax collector killed by his comrades for not remitting his collections. Ely Oguis was in fact last seen in the company of soldiers before his death, and neighbors disprove the military’s claim of a supposed encounter between government forces and NPA rebels. In Bulan town in Sorsogon province, no less than Cesar Habla’s family asserts that the poor farmer was killed in their presence while tending to their copra production, contrary to the 8^th Scout Ranger Company’s media announcement that Habla died in an encounter with rebels.

What peace indeed. What tranquility these spell for a state that tolerates no tinge of dissent. Surely, landlords in government need no longer worry about militant peasant organizations legitimately demanding lands and agricultural advancement. Capitalist lawmakers need no longer worry about militant organizations protesting unemployment and loss of livelihoods. The state has at its disposal the ferocity and duplicity of Oplan Bayanihan, thanks to the 9^th Infantry Division, to subdue a discontented people.

Peace based on justice

But decades of struggle against repressive regimes in succession have sharpened the critical minds of the people and have toughened their resolve. Experience has equipped the masses to determine the anti-people natures of one counter-insurgency campaign after another. And this is Oplan Bayanihan’s fundamental weakness – it fails to win the support of the people because it does not solve age-old problems of landlessness, grinding poverty, and injustice.

More importantly, Oplan Bayanihan is faced with a resolute fight. Early on into the PDTs’ onslaught, the people of Albay staged a series of wide protests condemning Oplan Bayanihan and demanding the pull-out of the PDTs. A significant aspect of these protests, aside from being sustained, is the gathering of collective support from various parts of the region. The people’s will to carry on with their anti-militarization campaign warms up even more as they are joined by fellow peasants across the region. These supporters may be communities also suffering from the ills of Oplan Bayanihan, or those in solidarity with the struggles of their class.

The force of a people drawn together paid off when the series of protests resulted in the Albay Provincial Board issuing a resolution requiring the PDTs to vacate public establishments. Also, the Regional Office of the Commission on Human Rights was urged by these mobilizations to conduct an investigation which led to calling for an end to the grave human rights violations being committed by the 2^nd IB.

Camarines Norte’s 12 villages also enjoyed the support from different sectors across Bicol when a regional Fact Finding Mission was conducted in May 2012 to further expose the atrocities committed by the 49th IB. Also in October of 2012, a regional mobilization marched along the streets of the province’ capital to demand from the government the punishment and pull-out of the 49th IB from the villages.

Much is still to be done, as even if the 2^nd IB has been compelled to build their own barracks, the soldiers continue to return to public facilities in blatant disregard of lawful decisions. Much is still to be done, as the 49th IB continues to occupy 13 barrios in Labo, and as the rest of Bicol’s countrysides continue to swell with PDTs.

While Oplan Bayanihan has three more years to go, it’s demise has already been declared by the people - a demise assured not only by Oplan Bayanihan’s inherent flaws, but most of all, by the people’s resolve to further strengthen their ranks and sustain the fight against this deadly counter-insurgency campaign alongside continuing struggles for land, livelihood, and justice. ###