Hope despite chainsaws
Chinop-chop,” private prosecutor Nena Santos said in Taglish to the court trying the Maguindanao slaughter of 57 men and women. “Parang chainsaw massacre.”
“Chop-chop” is police jargon for dismemberment. Use of a chainsaw is exceptionally brutal. To explain this perversion, we need to call in psychiatrists.
In Mexico, the Sinaloa drug cartel beheaded two members who squealed with a chainsaw. In Texas, a mother of six was decapitated by her husband. “The chainsaw was still running when police arrived,” reported the Dallas Morning News.
Chainsaws did in Esmail Amil Enog. Upon instructions of Alijol Ampatuan, he trucked the clan’s armed followers in two batches to Ampatuan town, Enog told the court last July. There, gunmen mowed down 57, then backhoed the bodies into hidden common pits. Victims included the wife and relatives of Esmael Mangudadatu, political rivals of the Ampatuans. Also butchered were 32 journalists and six passersby.
As he drove back to Shariff Aguak town, Enog heard bursts of gunfire. In court, Enog pinpointed four, among militiamen accused: Mohades and Misuari Ampatuan, Mohamad Datumanong, alias Nicomedes Tolentino and Tato Tampogao.
In March, Enog vanished. He had been missing for two months when local police were tipped off and exhumed his remains.
“His body was put in a sack and it had been chopped up, probably chain-sawed to pieces,” prosecutor Nena Santos told Agence France Presse. “It was a killing meant to silence other witnesses.”
Cu è surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent’anni ‘mpaci, say Sicilians who’ve seen the Mafia operate close up. “He who is deaf, blind, and silent will live a hundred years in peace.”
Enog didn’t live to be a hundred. “(He) was… dismembered in a signature style – with a chainsaw,” wrote GMA News’ Mark Meruenas. “(This) was the latest in a series of attempts to weaken the case against jailed leaders of the Ampatuan clan.”
The government should “redouble its efforts” to protect witnesses in the Maguindanao murder trial,” the New York-based Human Rights Watch urged. “It is appalling that they are being hunted down one after the other.”
On June 14 last year, former militiaman Suwaib Upham was mowed down in Parang, Cotabato. “Just another case of killing”, noted the police blotter one week late. No mention that he was a massacre witness
Upham appeared on Al Jazarea TV, face masked using the pseudo of “Boy.” He was promised money to take part in the massacre, he said. Now, he feared for his life and his family.
In a later Inquirer interview, , Upham – who’d then swapped his alias to “Jesse” – asserted the 200 armed men were mustered for the murders. They were led by Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. who is now in detention with clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr. Currently, 64 are on trial in Manila for the mass killing. Over 160 remain at large.
Centerlaw Philippines, which assists the families of 14 Maguidanao victims, lashed at the Arroyo regime for “denying protection to this witness… There is blood on the hands of (Justice Secretary) Agra and Ms Arroyo. May they forever by haunted by the souls of Jesse and the rest of the victims.”
There are ‘whispers’ that the chainsawing murders started after 2001. Then Commission on Human Rights chairman Leila de Lima told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines: “Initial information reaching CHR identified the towns of Shariff Aguak and Ampatuan as areas where these graves could be found.”
Now Justice Secretary, De Lima called that shot right. Skeletal remains of chainsaw victims were exhumed from a plot near Shariff Aguak early this year by Department of Justice and National Bureau of Investigation teams. Witnesses linked Mayor Samer Uy of Datu Piang Uy and other Ampatuan clan members to the “chainsaw massacre.”
Mayor Uy had, by then, flown the coop. He has been missing for nearly three months, Inquirer reported late March. “(Uy went) into hiding after being linked to chainsawing 18 people to shreds. The 18 were linked by political warlords to the 2003 assassination of Datu Piang Mayor Saudi Ampatuan Sr. Uy is a brother-in-law of former Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr.
Chainsaws welded in vendetta within a province of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao are not only a grisly symbol. They could upset promising reforms intiated by President Benigno Aquino III for the abuse-gutted ARRM.
Republic Act 10153 postponed the ARMM elections. The vote is synchronized with the midterm 2013 elections. That would give time to scrub voters’ rolls stuffed with an estimated 100,000 ghost voters. Lanao del Sur has the highest number of flying voters.
“Cheating is not the monopoly of Maguidanao,” Rep. Bai Mendra Sema told the Mindanano Cross weekly. She and Rep. Simeon Datumanong were not consulted. “If re-registration is done for the entire region, I will support that.”
Reforms so far include new ARRM officials and 24 members of a Regional Legislative Assembly. Commission on Human Rights set up its first ever field office in Cotabato. Despite chainsaws and set backs like a Corona-era Supreme Court TRO, change is happening.
“The new public forum in choosing leaders has never been done in a region known for a culture of silence and of impunity,” notes director of the Institute for Autonomy and Governance, Fr. Eliseo Mercado.
“For the first time, the voices (of people) were heard. (These) are truly elements of a Bangsamoro ‘spring’”
