Hundreds join caravan to bury Italian priest, farmer

Cries for justice for Fr. Fausto “Pops” Tentorio gave way to the anguished cries of the wife of a farmer from Arakan town allegedly killed by soldiers, and the wife of the sitio (sub-village) leader beaten and still detained by soldiers in North Cotabato, as the caravan for justice for the Italian priest traveled from Davao City to Kidapawan City.

Over a thousand people from different groups outraged by the killing of Tentorio, joined the caravan of 30 buses that brought them to Kidapawan City, where Tentorio is expected to be buried today.

Justice calls

The caravan stopped at the roadside where a dirt road branches out of the Davao Cotabato highway to the 57th Infantry Battalion headquarters in Malasila town.

On their streamers were slogans calling for justice for Tentorio and the farmer who recently died, as well as a stop to extrajudicial killings.

Overtaken by her grief, the wife of Ramon Batoy squatted on the pavement and crying, said the soldiers should leave Arakan, after what they have done to her husband and two more men in the village on Oct. 20.

She recounted how sitio leader Noli Badol arrived at their house that morning, asking for a cup of coffee, when the soldiers came. First, she had asked Badol to face the soldiers, and then, when Badol was already out talking to the soldiers by the roadside, she also asked her husband to follow Badol.

Four soldiers

Later, four soldiers went to their house and one of them, asked her husband to enter the house. When her husband refused, the soldier struck his face with a rifle butt. Her husband decided to fight ending  up hacking the soldier’s neck with a bolo.

Evelyn Badol, 32, the wife of the sitio leader detained by the soldiers, said the whole village saw how her husband, his hands and feet cuffed, was made to lie by the side of the road for four hours under the sun. They also placed next to him the body of Ramon Batoy.

Later, at about 11 a.m., the soldiers asked villagers to help bring Batoy’s body and the handcuffed Badol, in a carabao-driven cart from Sitio Upper Lumbo to the center of Barangay (village) Kabalintaan. There, Badol was also made to sit next to the body under the hot sun.

Batoy’s wife Gina (not Gemma as earlier reported) also said the killing of her husband happened in full view of her 8-year- old son, who was left alone upstairs when the soldiers came.

In the ensuing violence, when the soldiers started strafing their and their neighbor’s houses following the killing of her husband, she was running around, looking for her children. She found her 10-year-old girl safe, but realized that the 8-year-old boy was in the house while the house was still being strafed. Braving her way to the house, she was met by the boy who told her, “Ma, father is dead.”

Ghost town

She told him, “yes, but never mind, as long as you’re safe and let’s get out of here safe.”

She said the villagers have fled leaving their place like a ghost town. They went to Arakan town that night, where Father Pops body lay in wake at the Mother of Perpetual Help Church. She said she learned that the soldiers reportedly came back the following day, looking for them and stayed in their house.

Elena Filomeno-Batoy, 76, mother of Ramon, said she saw how soldiers “sliced” the belly of her dead son, so that his intestines came out.

On the carabao cart which carried the body, alongside the bound sitio leader, Batoy’s body was also made to sit, with a rifle in his hands, Batoy’s mother said.

Road occupied

From the boundary of Kidapawan and Makilala, people went off the caravan and bearing the placards voicing out their demands, marched towards the long stretch of road to the city’s Lady Mediatrix Cathedral. They occupied one lane of the road that stretched from the city agrarian reform office to the site of the United Doctor’s hospital in Kidapawan City.

Earlier, at the rally in Malasila, a brief scuffle ensued when a plainclothed policeman went in the middle of the rally, taking pictures of the protesters. Some protesters stopped the man, resulting to a brief struggle.

Military officials earlier insisted that Batoy was a New People’s Army rebel killed in a legitimate encounter.