Follow killer backhoe to keep case moving
HIGHLY VISIBLE EVIDENCE Now a monstrous symbol of the Maguindanaomassacre, the backhoe that crunched the vehicles and bodies, sits idly at the evidence yard in the police compound in Koronadal City five years after the worst election violence in Philippine history. INQUIRER PHOTO
KORONADAL CITY—Its rust-red boom neatly folded, the yellow backhoe that crunched the vehicles and bodies of 58 people, most of them media workers, in what is now called the Maguindanao massacre stands idle in the evidence yard of a police compound here.
To the relatives of the victims of the worst election violence in Philippine history, the government-owned backhoe parked under the huge acacia tree has become a symbol of the case— standing still, with justice unserved five years after the killings in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province.
“It will be exactly five years since the gruesome Ampatuan massacre that killed 58 individuals, 32 of them journalists,” Rowena Paraan, chair of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), said in a letter to NUJP chapters nationwide. “And up to now, no one has been convicted and held to account for the most heinous crime in recent Philippine history.”
The backhoe
Article continues after this advertisementWhen the first accounts of the massacre came out of Ampatuan on Nov. 23, 2009, they were accompanied by pictures of the backhoe, marked clearly and prominently “Province of Maguindanao” and “Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr.,” towering over the freshly dug mass grave in Barangay Salman.
Article continues after this advertisementThe backhoe was used to bury the vehicles and the bodies of victims, and the pictures of it laid bare the despicable attempt by the ruling political clan in Maguindanao to erase traces of the crime.
The markings on the backhoe are now faded and barely readable, while the continuous tracks are rusty. The name of Andal Sr. is no longer readable, as if validating the fears of the families and friends of the victims that one of the most heinous crimes in the Philippines will be forgotten.
“Oh, is the case still alive?” a police officer said in a startled tone while directing the Inquirer to sign the logbook to be allowed to take photographs of the backhoe.
“I thought the case was dead,” he said, adding that he had heard rumors of a payoff.
The trial of Ampatuan, his sons and their followers, which started in January 2010, has been “characterized by word wars between prosecutors, delaying tactics by defense lawyers, bribery accusations and abject lack of updates for the families of the victims,” Paraan said.
Engineering marvel
The backhoe is in the evidence yard of the Philippine National Police regional office in Barangay Tambler, fenced off and declared off-limits to outsiders.
Beside it are the wreck of the UNTV car that led a convoy of six vehicles that was waylaid in Sitio Masalay in Barangay Salman.
In an interview with GMA 7, backhoe operator Bong Andal described how he used the machine “to push the vehicles into the hole first, then flattened them using its metal arm.” He has turned state witness in the trial.
The PNP compound is a 30-minute ride from downtown General Santos City, through dusty rolling hills similar to the topography of the massacre site.
After the attack, and at least among journalists, the image of the backhoe has changed from an engineering marvel used to dig up a huge volume of rock and earth, lift heavy things and crumble asphalt and uproot tree stumps for the benefit of humankind to a piece of equipment used to hide any hints of a crime committed with unspeakable brutality.
‘A lot of changes’
On the road to Ampatuan town, backhoes are back at work.
“Before, you could hardly see anything from the road,” said Senior Supt. Rodelio Jocson, who took over as police chief of Maguindanao in January 2010, barely two months after the massacre. “Now, you can see lots and lots of houses, there are a lot of changes.”
New areas are being developed, Jocson said, not only in Maguindanao but also in other areas of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. But he declined to comment on the case.
Jocson led a convoy of vehicles loaded with police officers from PNP headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City, and other parts of the country to the memorial for the victims at the massacre site on Nov. 13. As soon as they reached the site, a number of policemen drew out their tablets and phones to take selfies.
Houses have sprouted near the memorial and a new community seems to have turned isolated Masalay into a village bustling with life.
New community
Taya Ibrahim, 28, said her family decided to build a hut in the area because they were allowed to plant corn and make a living there. They are earning better in Masalay than in their old place in Ampatuan, she said.
“We are not afraid because we were not a part of what happened,” said Ibrahim, who has five children, including a 15-year-old son who had gotten married and now has a year-old child.
“We are working only in the cornfields,” she said. “We used to till only a hectare of land in the place where we used to live but here, we can till as wide an area as we can.”
In another hut, Raznia Ismael said she had already been tilling the cornfields when the killings happened. “We even heard the gunshots and saw many trucks pass by,” she said. “But we did not see much because we were afraid to come up here.”
She used to live in a village below the massacre site but decided to move nearer because of her work in the cornfields.
Litmus test
NUJP regards the Maguindanao massacre case as a litmus test of how the Philippine justice system works. At least 33 more journalists have been killed in the Philippines since the massacre, bringing to 171 the number of journalists killed since the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution touted to have restored democracy in the country.
No mastermind has been convicted in any of these cases, according to NUJP. Failing to prosecute the killers and the masterminds only worsens the state of impunity and threatens the lives of more journalists, it said.
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