Inquirer Mindanao
Iligan folk ask: Who will help us?
By Christine Godinez-Ortega
Mindanao Bureau
First Posted 23:31:00 08/23/2008
ILIGAN CITY, Philippines—Where are the soldiers? Who will help us?
These questions were in the minds of many Iliganons angered by government’s late response to the atrocities committed by Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels led by Abdulla Macapaar alias Kumander Bravo, in Kolambugan and Kauswagan towns of Lanao del Norte, early morning of August 18.
The military, according to witnesses, only appeared in Kauswagan town towards noon. Too late, as bodies were already lying along the highway, a bus had been strafed, a police jeep and 10 houses had been burned.
To top it all, about 30 residents, most of them elderly, were taken as hostages by the rebels as young as 15 to 18 years old.
For three days before the big day, Iliganons received text messages warning them of the circumstance, time and place of bombings and attacks on Lanao del Norte towns of Linamon, Kauswagan, Kolambugan and Iligan City. When two bombs did go off in two of Iligan’s inns, Caprice and the Traveller’s Inn, late Sunday afternoon on Aug. 17, Iliganons braced for the worse.
Iligan residents stacked up canned goods and noodles and they made sure there was plenty of drinking water and candles in their homes and gasoline for their vehicles. Most important, they packed at least a change of clothes and malongs, threw in the legal papers and valuables into a bag, at the ready, just in case.
On the day of the attack, scenes of evacuees streaming into Iligan, of a mother holding her day-old baby tearfully narrating that her husband was killed before her and her one-year-old child.
Inside their houses, TV sets and radios were kept on the whole day as evacuees arrived in pump boats and, before TV cameras, sounding like the proverbial broken record, revealed a litany of fresh atrocities: the burning of 10 houses, the random shooting and hacking of civilians, the lopping off of an ear of evacuee, Tiburcio Rolfo, in his 60s, and the taking of elderly residents of Kauswagan town, as hostages by the rebels struck fear in everyone.
Amid these fears, the ambush and killing of a military intelligence officer raised doubts over the capability of our military to defend civilians because it could not save its own.
Ester Gansan Gentiles, 57, a housewife from Lapayan, Kauswagan angrily denounced President Macapagal-Arroyo’s government comparing her to former President Joseph Estrada who came to Lanao del Norte during the flushing out of MILF camps in 2000.
“The soldiers came late. GMA wants us to be killed first before she sends help. Estrada was better because he even came to Lanao,” said Gentiles.
That fateful day in Kauswagan, Gentiles said she was roused by gunshots at 5 a.m.
Since the shots did not seem to come from a high powered firearm, she went back to sleep, adding that if those were by the M.I. (locals call the MILF simply “MI”) as text messages had warned, she believed civilians would be spared. MILF rebels in the past, Gentiles said, trained their guns at soldiers by the town bridge but left civilians alone.
An hour later, the same day, Gentiles was shocked to see burning houses along the highway. Still, she was hopeful the military would send a rescue team. When another hour passed with no rescue team in sight, she immediately gathered her three grandchildren, ages 1 to 3 years old, grabbed a bag of feeding bottles and left for the beach as other residents began boarding pump boats bound for Iligan because the national highway was already controlled by the rebels.
For P100 per person or P400 to fuel a pump boat, fleeing residents left for Iligan City while evacuees in Kolambugan town turned towards Ozamiz City.
Women and children were allowed to board first but some men insisted on joining them resulting in the overloading of one boat that capsized.
During the flight of Kauswagan residents, many children were separated from their parents. Gentiles said she noticed two kids without any adult companions who quietly sat on the boat with the rest of the evacuees.
Who was in charge? Why the delays in the rescue? How serious is government in ending this insurgency?
Unless these questions are answered and the public told of the military bureaucracy that had been the subject of a heated exchange when Iligan officials met military personnel dramatized by a walkout, tears and apologies, Iliganons will have to rely on themselves, hence, empowering them in the absence of help or indecisions from those who are in power and from those who believe they alone can wield it.
Even local officials have asked: has the government abandoned us? Are we to defend ourselves?
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