Man tagged as NPA insists he is non-combatant civilian Romeo Rivera
New People’s Army. FILE PHOTO
DIGOS CITY, Davao del Sur, Philippines – Still shaken and confused over the new identity his captors wanted him to assume, the man the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command claimed was Felix Armodia rattled off the name of his father, his wife, his children, even the place where he lived in Koronadal in the last 14 years, just to prove to people who he was.
Romeo Rivera Jr., 53, who talked to Philippine Daily Inquirer inside the Digos police detention center Saturday, said his father and namesake, Romeo Sr., has been staying in a hospital in Tagum city; while his son and another namesake, Romeo III, has been working for a call center called Teleperformance in Manila.
“You can check it out, Ma’m, please check it out, my name is Romeo Rivera, how can I be someone else? I have a wife named Alona Eduarte, who is with my in-laws who are sick. We live in Koronadal in the last years. Please tell the people outside I am here and I am Romeo Rivera,” he said.
He also asked friends who knew him to come and help.
Capt. Alberto Caber, spokesperson of the military’s Eastern Mindanao Command based in Davao City, said Rivera, an anti-mining activist, was actually Felix Armodia, the “notorious front secretary of the New People’s Army (NPA) operating in Davao del Sur, South Cotabato and Tulunan, North Cotabato.”
Caber said Rivera has only been one of Armodia’s aliases. But Rivera said he heard about Felix Armodia for the first time while he was inside the pickup after the soldiers took him from his home.
The group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) had alerted the public about Rivera’s abduction when it held an indignation rally in General Santos on Friday evening but the Eastmincom released a statement the following day identifying Rivera as the notorious NPA leader named Felix Armodia.
Rivera said he was forcibly taken by soldiers from his home in Sitio Antonio, Purok Lower San Juan in Barangay (village) San Roque in Koronadal at about 1 p.m. Friday, May 2. “Wala ko’y laing nalitok kundili, ‘maayong udto,’(I wasn’t able to say anything but ‘good afternoon’)” Rivera said, as the men arrested him, handcuffed and blindfolded him and forced him to a waiting car.
“My two children were with me in Koronadal. One of them, Arel, was in the house when I was taken away but I don’t know what happened to him because I heard soldiers told him to lie on his stomach, while they took me away.”
In a separate interview, Arel Rivera said he was inside the house, while his father was taking a rest in “hammock” outside, when he heard some screaming and commotion outside. When he looked up, soldiers with long firearms were entering the house, and ordered him to lie on his stomach. He said someone hit him and ordered him to crawl outside of the house.
“Then they made Papa stand from the hammock and were about to take him, when I heard him plead, ‘Please let me put on my clothes first,’ for he was not wearing a shirt but it was as if they did not hear him,” Arel said.
He said his father, who was involved in a community vermiculture project, was busy cleaning his garden the whole morning. “We had a late breakfast at 10 a.m., so, when they took him, he did not have his lunch.”
Pastor Sadrach Sabella, Karapatan regional coordinator, said Rivera served as a convenor of the newly formed group Tampakan Panalipdan (Defend Tampakan), a group opposed to large scale mining in Tampakan, South Cotabato, where Glencore-Xstrata-SMI operates.
Sabella said Rivera’s group organized the Mindanao-wide forum to observe Earth Day on April 22 and echoed the people’s firm opposition against the foreign large scale mining operation of Glencore Xstrata – Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI).
Eastmincom said Rivera’s arrest was done by a combined operation of the police and the Philippine Army.
Sabella said 10 Blaans were already killed at the mine site of Glencore Xstrata SMI since President Aquino came to power.
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