MANILA, Philippines—Weeping, 50-year-old snack vendor Juliet Evardo on Thursday recounted how she and her family had suffered as a result of the death of her son Jolito in the Maguindanao massacre.
Testifying at the resumption of the trial of the case at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City, Evardo said the loss of her son, an editor and assistant cameraman of UNTV, had a big impact on her family because he was helping put three of his six siblings through school.
“It’s like one of your arms was cut off … He never wanted me to be sad but until now, I still think about [his death] and it still pains me inside,” Evardo told Judge Jocelyn Solis Reyes.
“I always think of how they could have killed my son when he did nothing wrong. I’m disheartened because he had so many dreams,” the mother said.
Jolito was 23 (not 24, as earlier reported), one of the youngest victims in the massacre.
The family is seeking at least P15 million from the perpetrators—P10 million for moral damages and P5 million for exemplary damages.
‘I love my work’
Evardo testified that on the night of Nov. 20, 2009, Jolito told his parents at their home in Davao City that he had to go to General Santos City.
He said he would join the convoy of relatives and supporters of then Maguindanao gubernatorial candidate Esmael Mangudadatu who were to submit his certificate of candidacy to the Commission on Elections.
“We told him not to go because we had heard reports that it would not be safe. But he insisted, saying he was only doing his job,” Evardo said.
“He said: ‘Ma, Pa … this is just work and I love my work as a journalist. I send out the news,” she said, adding that she and her husband took their son to a bus stop for buses bound for General Santos.
The next time she saw Jolito, he was in a coffin.
Evardo said that on the afternoon of Nov. 23—or hours after the massacre—a fellow churchgoer told her that everyone in the Mangudadatu convoy had been killed.
She said she and her husband immediately decided to go to the UNTV office in Davao to confirm the information. But the officials at the TV station could not say for certain that its team was able to join the convoy.
Too painful
It was only on the afternoon of Nov. 25 that Evardo received a call confirming that her son was dead.
The family went to General Santos to claim the body. “I was crying and trying to accept that my son was gone,” Evardo said.
A wake was held at the UNTV station in General Santos. Jolito was buried on Dec. 6.
“My husband cried but he tried to hide it … Three of [Jolito’s] siblings did not come because it was too painful for them,” Evardo said.
She added that the youngest of her children later failed all of his subjects in school because of his classmates’ taunts concerning his brother’s death.
Defense lawyers did not cross-examine Evardo on her testimony.
Earlier in the hearing, police sketch artist PO2 Danny Fortaleza was grilled by defense lawyers for purported discrepancies in the sketches he had made of the crime scene.
Call for live coverage
The trial will resume on June 16 because the court will hold preliminary and pretrial conferences next week and on the 15th for Andal Ampatuan Sr. and another accused arraigned on Wednesday.
Commenting on the arraignment of the patriarch of the powerful clan, President Aquino’s spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said Malacañang shared the people’s expectations “that justice will be done and justice meted out.”
“We must remain concerned, vigilant and observant,” Lacierda said in a statement. “We must see the process through, and all of us will remain dissatisfied so long as this mass murder remains unpunished and unresolved.”
Lacierda also reiterated Malacañang’s call for the Supreme Court to allow the live coverage of the trial of the Ampatuans and their allies.
“The light of the law, the true and full details of the case, deserve to reach every home in the nation,” he said. With a report from Norman Bordadora