Soldiers arrest former UP physics teacher after Davao Oriental clash

KIM GARGAR in a wheelchair at the provincial hospital in Mati City in Davao Oriental NICO ALCONABA/INQUIRER MINDANAO

MATI CITY, Davao Oriental—When Kim Gargar, a former physics teacher, was found wounded in the head and right foot by soldiers along a river in Barangay (village) Aliwagwag in Cateel town on Oct. 1, two versions of whatever happened to him have surfaced.

Lt. Col. Krishnamurti Mortela, commander of the Army’s 67th Infantry Battalion, said Gargar, 33, was unconscious when the soldiers with K9 sniff dogs saw him at 1 p.m. following a clash with communist rebels in the village. One Commander Ryan was killed and at least five soldiers were wounded in the fight.

Gargar had an M-16 rifle, land mines and rebel documents by his side, Mortela said. Based on documents that the military has gathered, he joined the New People’s Army (NPA) in 2012.

It was a different story that Gargar told the Inquirer in an interview at his room in the provincial hospital here. He insisted that he was not a rebel and was doing research work when he was arrested.

He said he was on leave from his work at the Center for Environmental Concerns, which is based in Quezon City, and had spent the last three months in Cateel and in Compostela Valley town at the behest of the environmental group Panalipdan to conduct “resource mapping.”

The project, he said, was aimed at knowing where and how to revive the environment in Davao Oriental in the aftermath of Typhoon “Pablo” in December 2012.

Gargar, a physics graduate of Mindanao State University’s Iligan Institute of Technology in Iligan City, taught physics at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, from 2000 to 2003, and at Mindanao Polytechnic School in Cagayan de Oro City from 2003 to 2005.

In 2006, he taught at Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Sta. Mesa, Manila, and at Mapua Institute of Technology, also in Manila, from 2007 to 2008. He served as research director on computational science at Mapua.

He also worked as a technical writer for Asian Development Bank for six months in 2007.

On the night of Sept. 30, Gargar said he was near a river at Kilometer 21 in Aliwagwag for a “night observation of nocturnal species.”

“At dawn, there were gunshots. Apparently there was an encounter, so I ran. While going downstream, away from where the gunfire was coming from, I fell off a waterfall,” he said. He said he fell about 20 feet, resulting in a head injury and a fractured right foot.

“I could not run any farther,” he said.

Soldiers pursuing the NPA rebels found him by the riverside around

1 p.m. of Oct. 1, Gargar said. They bandaged his head wound and brought him to the town proper and to a hospital under police guard.

Capt. Raul Villegas, chief of the public affairs office of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, said cases of illegal possession of a firearm and explosives, and multiple frustrated murder had already been filed against Gargar “since he was involved in the encounter.”

Villegas said the military would leave it to the court to decide whether or not Gargar was telling the truth when he claimed that he is not an NPA member.

Gargar said the soldiers had not seized any explosives and documents from him. He said all he had were a belt bag, notes and a digital camera.

A militant human rights group in Southern Mindanao said Gargar was being wrongfully accused by the military.

In a statement sent to the media here, Karapatan said Gargar was “conducting research and land scoping in areas affected by Typhoon Pablo” for Agham, in cooperation with the nongovernment organizations Balsa Southern Mindanao and  Rural Missionaries in the Philippines, when he figured in the accident in Davao Oriental.

Gargar admitted that he had spent four years (2009-2012) in The Netherlands where he pursued a doctorate in chronobiology. “I still have to finish my thesis,” he said.

His stay in The Netherlands also explained his Facebook photo with the Communist Party of the Philippines’ founding chair Jose Maria Sison and Dutch activist Thomas van Beersum, who was deported by the Philippine government after shouting at a policeman during a protest march against President Aquino’s State of the Nation Address in July.

Gargar said there was nothing wrong with the photo, which, he added, was taken in December last year. “What crime did I commit with that photo?” he asked.