As I have often noted, the NPA's Southern Mindanao Regional Committee, or SMRC, long ago entered into a marriage of convnience with local warlord Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte. The son of a fomer governor of what was then the unified province of Davao, the father of current Davao City Mayor Sarah "Inday" Duterte Carpio, a city he himself currently serves as its Vice Mayor. While working as a City Prosecutor there in the mid-1980s, Duterte naturally ran across a good many members of the NPA, and its political wing, the CPP, or Communist Party of the Philippines.
When Roddy decided to run for Mayor at the tail end of that same decade, he utilized one particular relationship with a high ranking member of the NPA in Davao City, Leonicio Pitao, better known by his nom de guerre, "Ka Parago.".The majority of the city's poorest areas had become battlegrounds between the NPA, its urban assaaination element, the SPARU (Special Armed Red Partisan Units), the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) and its ultra-right wing extremist organizations, like Alsa Masa (Masses Arise). In exchange for relegating all NPA activities to three outlying districts of Davao City, Roddy would offer overt assistance in the form of cash, material, and intelligence. That quid pro quo remains in effect today.
Unlike her father, current Mayor Sarah "Inday" Durerte Carpio, has failed to maintain that same mutually beneficial relationship with the NPA. Things began well enough when Mayor Duterte Carpio entered office in June of 2010. Despite serving as a senior officer in the AFP Reserves, Carpio played hardball with the 69IB (Infantry Battalion), threatening to withdraw Davao City's share of financial support for the 69's COIN (Counterinsurgency) program in the city's outlying Paquibato District, one of the three aforementioned districts that her father, current Vice Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte had surrendered-for all intensive purposes-to the NPA. Mayor Duterte Carpio was livid over the 69's kinetic operations which, in her absolutely ignorant opinion, were utilized far too freely. In the waning days of OPlan Bantay Laya II, the irate Mayor decided to take a stand...so what if she single handedly reversed six years of AFP gains made in Paquibato, and by relation-since that district is the lynchpin in the NPA occupation of the three contigious districts-all of Davao City.
For Christmas of 2010 Mayor Duterte Carpio accompanied her father, the Vice Mayor, to Ka Parago's (then) main camp, on a forest covered ridge above Paquibato District. As is always the case, Duterte came without his security detachment. That festive occasion would mark the high point in Mayor Duterte's relationship with the NPA. From
there it was a steady decline although Carpio did get some face time with Parago two months later when she once again accompanied her father in another visit to Paquibato. In this latter meeting Duterte stayed outside a villager's hut where Parago, his Political Secretary Ka Benjamin, and Mayor Carpio hashed out each other's wish lists.
February 6th, 2011 an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) set by the NPA's 1st Pulang Bagani Company detonated in an ambush of a supply convoy serving posts manned by the 69IB (Infantry Battalion). Mayor Carpio had been scheduled
to appear at an outreach program later in the day. Pitao took the extraordinary step of personally issuing a statement on the ambush. He pointed out that the detonation occurred in Purok #5, in Paquibato's Barangay Mapula. In conyrast, Mayor Carpio's planned route was many kilometers from the blast site.
The issue that has best defined Mayor Carpio's interaction with the NPA has neen the outcry ovet the 69IB garrisoning a detachment on the grounds of the Paradise Embac Annex Primary School, in Paquibato District's Barangay Paradise Embac. Three City Councilors, Kaloy Bello, Leah Librado Yap and Jimmy Dureza have championed the demand made by residents of the NPA-controlled barangay, asking that the 69IB remove the post from school grounds. At the tail end of the Summer of 2011, the issue came to a head as the NPA mass front organization, Karapatan-which bills itself as a human rights NGO-galvanized a wider ranging response to a clear breech of International Law, courtesy of the AFP. Given her history of speaking out against over-militirization in that very district, Mayor Carpio might have been expected to at least try and assuage the very real concerns of school staff, students, and the families of those students. Instead, in her ever increasingly haughty tone, Mayor Carpio not only sided with the AFP, she arrogantly dismissed the concerns expressed by the aforementioned stakeholders.
At that point the NPA did its part in burning whatever proverbial bridges remained. Taking part in a co-ordinated stance that began in September of 2011, when the NDFP member orgabization SELDA (Samahan ng Ex-Detainees Labann sa Detensyon at Aresto/Task Force on Ex- Political Prisoners) attacked Carpio in the local media over an interview she had given in which she had had the audacity-and ignorance-to claim that all Political Prisoners are detained for actual crimes. Then, in an official statement released by the NPA's Southern Mindanao Regional Committee, or SMRC, accused Mayor Carpio of letting power go to her head (and that was the nicest thing it said). The statement, released in December of 2011, was an iota away from a death warrant, branding Carpio as having "bordered on being a counterrevolutionary or reactionary." In fact, it segued into a vicious tirade against Carpio with a laundry list of critical grievances. It was interesting in other ways because it noted how her father, Vice Mayor Duterte, had "in some ways recognized and cooperated in the revolutionary struggle," an "admission" that seemed even more pronounced once Duterte was officialy named an "Observer," and later a "Consultant" for the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, or NDFP, the negotiating arm of the CPP/NPA/NDFP Maoist triumverate.
So it was that the customary Christmas slash New Years Truce of the NPA failed to usher in anything new. An uneasy air hanging over Paquibato District left many stakeholders nervously awaiting an armed response by Ka Parago. On January 12th, 2012, the tension broke when Parago's 1st Pulang Bagani Company launched two simeltaneous attacks on a pair of CAA posts. The CAA, or Civilian Active Auxiliaries, are a geographically static armed reserve of the AFP. The CAA element most visible to civilians are the CAFGU, or Civilian Auxiliary Forces Geographical Units. CAFGU posts are manned by residents of the barangay housing that specific post. CAFGU posts are then limited in only being able to operate within the boundries of their specific municipality.
In Paquibato District there is a different type of CAA. Usually listed as CAFGU posts. They are actuallt tribal and clan paramilitaries grandfathered in under the now defunct ISP (Internal Security Plan), "Oplan Alsa Lumad" (Operational Plan Hilltribes Arise). Like CAFGUs they are under the nominal command of am AFP cadre, usually a Corporal. Whereas CAFGU opetate in tandem with an AFP cadre battalion, the tribal paramilitaries often operate independently and as one might imagine, this does at times lead to unhealthy excesses.
On the day in question, at 3AM, two CAA posts in adjoining puroks (a barangay can be sub-divided into five puroks), within Paquibato District's Barangay Malabog, were attacked by two NPA elements. The posts, in Puroks Cababon and Golden Shower (no jokes please, it is an actual purok though for the life of me, I have no idea why it was bequathed that name), were both able to repel the Maoists but with two CAAs being wounded in the process.
CAA Loreto Lireta of Purok Golden Shower, was wounded in his left hand and left side of his chest by shrapnel from a rifle grenade. CAA Anthony Camansi of Purok Cabonbon, was wounded in his right hand.
Showing posts with label 1st Pulang Bagani Company. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1st Pulang Bagani Company. Show all posts
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Friday, November 18, 2011
NPA Armed Contacts for the Fourth Quarter of 2011, Part X: Rebelyn Pitao's Ghost Won't be Silenced, Part 3
In the first two parts of this three part entry I discussed the legendary figurehead of the NPA in Southern Mindanao, Leonicio Pitao who is known by many as "Ka Parago." Pitao, who joined the NPA as a farmboy in the municipality of Bayugan in Agusan del Sur Province in 1978, had by the late 1980s become the military commander of what is now known as the Southern Mindanao Regional Committee, or SMRC, the entity overseeing the entire Davao Region, also known as Region 11.
I have also been discussing member's of Pitao's immediate family, primarily his sister Evelyn and brother Danilo who were both murdered. The raison d'etra for this three part series however, was Pitao's third child with his wife, Evangeline Maasin Pitao, herself a former NPA guerilla. This child, a daughter, was saddled with the name "Rebelyn," pronounced "Rebellion," although the 20 year old shared nothing of father's propencity for violence nor his narrow Maoist ideology as filtered by the NPA, or New People's Army. Instead she was a homebody, only leaving her mother's side to tend to her recently acquired job at Davao City's Saint Peter's College of Technology where Rebelyn had usually been covering a second grade class.
Because of the relative security found in Davao City Rebelyn truly thought herself above the fray. This false sense of security led the young lady to being adhering to a regular routine. That regular routuine ended Rebelyn's life on March 4th, 2009. Upon her body being discovered half naked, stabbed, raped, and strangled the next afternoon, her father almost immediately pointed at the AFP as the true culprit. Two days after the death Leonicio Pitao named four men:
1) Sergeant (Sgt.) Helvin Bitang
2) Corporal (Cpl.) Orly Pedring Pedregosa
3) Sergeant Adan Masulao
4) Sergeant Ben Tipait
Pitao announced that these four mens' identities had been discovered during a quick, but painstaking investigation by the NPA. As I noted in Part 2, Pitao was lying through his teeth. Two of the men, Adan Musalao and Ben Tipait do not exist, at least under those names. The other two men, Sgt.Bitang and Cpl.Pedregosa, were both members of the ISAFP, Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and attached to MIG-11, or Military Intelligence Group for Region 11. Pitao knew these names because all those names were used by his brother Danilo's AFP handlers.
Still, with public opinion being what is and the media hounding him, the then Commanding Officer of the still very young 10ID (Infantry Divison), Major General Reynaldo B.Mapagu placed Sgt.Bitang and Cpl.Pedregosa on Barracks Restriction. At the time nobody bothered to ask the General just why he had put those two men on Restriction but did not do the same for the other two names.
In any event, as I noted in the preceding entry, by April 1st, 2009, less than 4 weeks after Leonicio Pitao announced those four names, he was ready to announce that there were 13 men tied to his daughter's death, some of who merely served as Military Assets, just like Danilo Santiago, Pitao's brother.
As luck or happenstance would have it, the Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), Leila de Lima- the same Ms.de Lima who is currently whoring herself- I mean serving the Aquino Administration- as the Secretary of the Department of Justice (DOJ), was then in town to hold a two day hearing examining the so called "Davao Death Squad," an Extra Judicial Execution jugganaut doing the bidding of then-Mayor of Davao City, Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte. Simply adding three days onto the end of the Davao Death Squad hearings, Commissioner de Lima summoned all 13 men named by Pitao.
On the sidelines of the Davao Death Squad hearing Major Genneral Mapagu tried to convince Ms.de Lima that due to the sensitive nature of all 13 men's security- related work, having them testify in the very public hearings very well might jeapordise their lives. The back and forth between the AFP and CHR continued until, on the afternoon of the first scheduled session, April 1st, the two sides agreed to a hastily created booth in the General Function Room of the Royal Mandaya Hotel, the venue in downtown Davao City that was histing both the hearings. Sitting behind a curtain rigged to cover a seven meter by three meter enclosure, soldiers would be able to offer their statements. However, by 1PM not a single of the thirteen had shown up. As Ms.de Lima threatened to not only cite the summoned men, but division brass as well, Major General Mapagu finally sent six of the men to the hotel. As for the rest, they were deployed outside of Davao City, which was then the location for 10ID Headquarters, or else were merely Military Assets over whom the AFP held no legal jurisdiction outside of their specific roles as covert agents. They could not be compelled by the AFP to appear at a hearing in which no specific charges had been filed.
Meanwhile, the two eyewitnesses to Rebelyn Pitao's abduction were located:
1) Danny Peliciano, a triksiad driver who had been driving Rebelyn home that night
2) Dina Talaboc, the female passenger who had also been riding with Rebelyn in Mr.Peliciano's triksiad
Both had gone into hiding immediately after the abduction but with a media onslaught and repeated appeals to the two eyewitnesses, both had surfaced. The CPO, or City Police's CIDG, or Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, showed each witness a photo array of the men named by Leonicio Pitao. Neither witness was able to identify a single one of the thirteen purported attackers.
The three day CHR Hearing on Rebelyn's Death the case went they way of virtually all such cases, no matter the notiriety. Although Leonicio Pitao would eventually list a total of twenty one men in the incident:
1) Sergeant Adan Masulao, the non-existent man first listed just after the killing was actually using an AFP provided identity, "Adan Sulao," but his real name was Sergeant Romeo Marcos
2) Sergeant Ben Tipait, another one of the first "non-existent" men was actually named Sergeant Edmar Tipait whose alias while handling Assets was "Ben"
3) Corporal Orly Pedring Pedregosa
4) Sergeant Helvin Bitang
5) Sergeant Melvin Punla
6) Sergeant Caballero, first name not known by Pitao
7) Major Cabanalan, first name not known by Pitao
8) Colonel Caguiwa, first name not known by Pitao
9) Sergeant Senit, first name not known by Pitao
10) Corporal Wennie Carampatan
The rest being Assets, some of whom are listed by their Asset Code Names, which is all Pitao knew:
11) Ruben Bitang, uncle of Sergeant Helvin Bitang. Ruben was the driver of the white Toyota Revo cargo van that was used in the abduction, according to Pitao
12) Romeo Carreon
13) Hagto
14) Embac
15) Ariel, also known as "Benjack"
16) Reynaldo "Joemar" Desales
17) Macky Estremos
18) Bobong Gambuta
19) Marcelino Cuyot Payot
The final two were listed by Pitao as "John Does." Not one was ever prosecuted. However, the NPA would begin checking names off of that long list, one by one, as the SMRC's SPARU Team began killing each of those attackers.
The first of the 21 to be killed was Macky Estremos, before the CHR hearing even took place, in the municipality of Carmen, in Davao del Norte Province.
Then, on April 14th, 2009, Marcelino Cuyot Payot, killed in Panabo City.
On April 27th, 2009, Bobong Gambuta was killed in Panabo City as well.
4) On May 3rd, 2009, Ruben Bitang, the man whom Pitao accused of driving the van used by the abductors.
5) On October 25th, 2009, the first actual AFP member on the list was killed. when Corpral Pedregosa was killed in Davao City's Paquibato District.
On December 14eh, 2009, a SPARU Team killed an innocent man, Fernando Timbal. Mr.Timbal, a bank courier for the quasi-Governmental Land Bank while he was driving the branch manger's pickup truck, in Panabo City. He was hit by 12 rounds from a 45 caliber pistol.
The sixth killing is the one which inspired this Fourth Quarter entry; On Thursday, November 10th, 2011, at 6AM, Corporal Winnie Carampatan was driving his motorcycle in Davao City's Pquibato District, driving his two young children and his nephew to school. As he entered Barangay Malabog two men walked into the middle of the road, both drawing down and opening fire. Carampatan was killed, causing the motorcycle to skid off the road but all three of the children survived, albeit with bumps, scrapes, and of course traumatising them for life. After Rebelyn was killed the AFP dissolved the detachment from MIG-11 biouvaced in Panabo City, the one fingered as having killed Rebelyn. Carampatan had ended up with the 73IB based in Compostela Vallet's municipality of Mawab..
Disgustingly, the 10ID never mentioned Rebelyn Pitao OR her killing when eulogising Carampatan in media releases, "Our soldier was a non-combatant during the incident. Worst, he was killed before the members of his own family..." Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda.
I have also been discussing member's of Pitao's immediate family, primarily his sister Evelyn and brother Danilo who were both murdered. The raison d'etra for this three part series however, was Pitao's third child with his wife, Evangeline Maasin Pitao, herself a former NPA guerilla. This child, a daughter, was saddled with the name "Rebelyn," pronounced "Rebellion," although the 20 year old shared nothing of father's propencity for violence nor his narrow Maoist ideology as filtered by the NPA, or New People's Army. Instead she was a homebody, only leaving her mother's side to tend to her recently acquired job at Davao City's Saint Peter's College of Technology where Rebelyn had usually been covering a second grade class.
Because of the relative security found in Davao City Rebelyn truly thought herself above the fray. This false sense of security led the young lady to being adhering to a regular routine. That regular routuine ended Rebelyn's life on March 4th, 2009. Upon her body being discovered half naked, stabbed, raped, and strangled the next afternoon, her father almost immediately pointed at the AFP as the true culprit. Two days after the death Leonicio Pitao named four men:
1) Sergeant (Sgt.) Helvin Bitang
2) Corporal (Cpl.) Orly Pedring Pedregosa
3) Sergeant Adan Masulao
4) Sergeant Ben Tipait
Pitao announced that these four mens' identities had been discovered during a quick, but painstaking investigation by the NPA. As I noted in Part 2, Pitao was lying through his teeth. Two of the men, Adan Musalao and Ben Tipait do not exist, at least under those names. The other two men, Sgt.Bitang and Cpl.Pedregosa, were both members of the ISAFP, Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and attached to MIG-11, or Military Intelligence Group for Region 11. Pitao knew these names because all those names were used by his brother Danilo's AFP handlers.
Still, with public opinion being what is and the media hounding him, the then Commanding Officer of the still very young 10ID (Infantry Divison), Major General Reynaldo B.Mapagu placed Sgt.Bitang and Cpl.Pedregosa on Barracks Restriction. At the time nobody bothered to ask the General just why he had put those two men on Restriction but did not do the same for the other two names.
In any event, as I noted in the preceding entry, by April 1st, 2009, less than 4 weeks after Leonicio Pitao announced those four names, he was ready to announce that there were 13 men tied to his daughter's death, some of who merely served as Military Assets, just like Danilo Santiago, Pitao's brother.
As luck or happenstance would have it, the Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), Leila de Lima- the same Ms.de Lima who is currently whoring herself- I mean serving the Aquino Administration- as the Secretary of the Department of Justice (DOJ), was then in town to hold a two day hearing examining the so called "Davao Death Squad," an Extra Judicial Execution jugganaut doing the bidding of then-Mayor of Davao City, Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte. Simply adding three days onto the end of the Davao Death Squad hearings, Commissioner de Lima summoned all 13 men named by Pitao.
On the sidelines of the Davao Death Squad hearing Major Genneral Mapagu tried to convince Ms.de Lima that due to the sensitive nature of all 13 men's security- related work, having them testify in the very public hearings very well might jeapordise their lives. The back and forth between the AFP and CHR continued until, on the afternoon of the first scheduled session, April 1st, the two sides agreed to a hastily created booth in the General Function Room of the Royal Mandaya Hotel, the venue in downtown Davao City that was histing both the hearings. Sitting behind a curtain rigged to cover a seven meter by three meter enclosure, soldiers would be able to offer their statements. However, by 1PM not a single of the thirteen had shown up. As Ms.de Lima threatened to not only cite the summoned men, but division brass as well, Major General Mapagu finally sent six of the men to the hotel. As for the rest, they were deployed outside of Davao City, which was then the location for 10ID Headquarters, or else were merely Military Assets over whom the AFP held no legal jurisdiction outside of their specific roles as covert agents. They could not be compelled by the AFP to appear at a hearing in which no specific charges had been filed.
Meanwhile, the two eyewitnesses to Rebelyn Pitao's abduction were located:
1) Danny Peliciano, a triksiad driver who had been driving Rebelyn home that night
2) Dina Talaboc, the female passenger who had also been riding with Rebelyn in Mr.Peliciano's triksiad
Both had gone into hiding immediately after the abduction but with a media onslaught and repeated appeals to the two eyewitnesses, both had surfaced. The CPO, or City Police's CIDG, or Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, showed each witness a photo array of the men named by Leonicio Pitao. Neither witness was able to identify a single one of the thirteen purported attackers.
The three day CHR Hearing on Rebelyn's Death the case went they way of virtually all such cases, no matter the notiriety. Although Leonicio Pitao would eventually list a total of twenty one men in the incident:
1) Sergeant Adan Masulao, the non-existent man first listed just after the killing was actually using an AFP provided identity, "Adan Sulao," but his real name was Sergeant Romeo Marcos
2) Sergeant Ben Tipait, another one of the first "non-existent" men was actually named Sergeant Edmar Tipait whose alias while handling Assets was "Ben"
3) Corporal Orly Pedring Pedregosa
4) Sergeant Helvin Bitang
5) Sergeant Melvin Punla
6) Sergeant Caballero, first name not known by Pitao
7) Major Cabanalan, first name not known by Pitao
8) Colonel Caguiwa, first name not known by Pitao
9) Sergeant Senit, first name not known by Pitao
10) Corporal Wennie Carampatan
The rest being Assets, some of whom are listed by their Asset Code Names, which is all Pitao knew:
11) Ruben Bitang, uncle of Sergeant Helvin Bitang. Ruben was the driver of the white Toyota Revo cargo van that was used in the abduction, according to Pitao
12) Romeo Carreon
13) Hagto
14) Embac
15) Ariel, also known as "Benjack"
16) Reynaldo "Joemar" Desales
17) Macky Estremos
18) Bobong Gambuta
19) Marcelino Cuyot Payot
The final two were listed by Pitao as "John Does." Not one was ever prosecuted. However, the NPA would begin checking names off of that long list, one by one, as the SMRC's SPARU Team began killing each of those attackers.
The first of the 21 to be killed was Macky Estremos, before the CHR hearing even took place, in the municipality of Carmen, in Davao del Norte Province.
Then, on April 14th, 2009, Marcelino Cuyot Payot, killed in Panabo City.
On April 27th, 2009, Bobong Gambuta was killed in Panabo City as well.
4) On May 3rd, 2009, Ruben Bitang, the man whom Pitao accused of driving the van used by the abductors.
5) On October 25th, 2009, the first actual AFP member on the list was killed. when Corpral Pedregosa was killed in Davao City's Paquibato District.
On December 14eh, 2009, a SPARU Team killed an innocent man, Fernando Timbal. Mr.Timbal, a bank courier for the quasi-Governmental Land Bank while he was driving the branch manger's pickup truck, in Panabo City. He was hit by 12 rounds from a 45 caliber pistol.
The sixth killing is the one which inspired this Fourth Quarter entry; On Thursday, November 10th, 2011, at 6AM, Corporal Winnie Carampatan was driving his motorcycle in Davao City's Pquibato District, driving his two young children and his nephew to school. As he entered Barangay Malabog two men walked into the middle of the road, both drawing down and opening fire. Carampatan was killed, causing the motorcycle to skid off the road but all three of the children survived, albeit with bumps, scrapes, and of course traumatising them for life. After Rebelyn was killed the AFP dissolved the detachment from MIG-11 biouvaced in Panabo City, the one fingered as having killed Rebelyn. Carampatan had ended up with the 73IB based in Compostela Vallet's municipality of Mawab..
Disgustingly, the 10ID never mentioned Rebelyn Pitao OR her killing when eulogising Carampatan in media releases, "Our soldier was a non-combatant during the incident. Worst, he was killed before the members of his own family..." Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda.
NPA Armed Contacts for the Fourth Quarter of 2011, Part X: The Ghost of Rebelyn Pitao wont be Silenced, Part 2
In "Part 1" of this three part entry I discussed the iconic NPA leader Leonicio Pitao. Much better known by his moniker "Ka Parago," Pitao joined the NPA in 1978 and despite the best efforts of dozens of very capable AFP and PNP commanders, noone has ever been able to stop him for long (the "AFP" and "PNP" being the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police). Indeed, Pitao's lone arrest resulted from his sister, Evelyn Pitao, who at the time was herself an NPA guerilla in Front 3, the Alejandro Lanaja Command, in Pitao's own Southern Mindanao Regional Committee (SMRC), who ended up serving the AFP as a Deep Penetration Agent until that arrest, when she was then pulled out of service.
Their brother Danilo, who in 1985 changed his surname to Santiago so as to stay one step ahead of inquisitive bureaucrats as he first attempted to leave the Philippines to serve aboard ocean going freighters, had stayed clear of the Maoist Insurgency that had seduced his brother and sister. I discussed both his sad fate and perhaps the poetically justified fate of Evelyn, but left the jist of my entry for this, the second and concluding part.
Rebelyn Maasin Pitao was Leonicio and his wife Evangeline Maasin Pitao's third child. Though the only one of their five children to be given a "revolutionary" name, Rebelyn was anything but a rebel. A quiet, selfless, unassuming young lady, she had not gravitated towards her father's activities or even his political leanings. Instead ahe had gained a university education and began working as a substitute teacher at Saint Peter's College of Technology in her hometown of Davao City.
Each morning at 630AM Rebelyn would leave her mother's home in Gallera de Oro Subdivision in Davao City's Talomo District. Walking the quiet streets of Barangay Bago Gallera she would catch a triksiad, or motorcycle sidecar taxi, to jeepney terminal in Barangay Bago Aplaya where she would then take a jeepney to the school where she eagerly welcomed her second grade students. At 445PM each day she would leave the school and walk to the Terminal where she would take her second triksiad of the day, always arriving at home by 645PM. It was this regular schedule that ended up costing Rebelyn Maasin Pitao her life.
On the evening of March 4th, 2009, Rebelyn climbed into Danny Peliciano's triksiad for the return trip home. A middle aged female passenger, Dina Talaboc, was already waiting, and just before Peliciano got ready to leave the terminal, two men in their late 20s or early 30s climbed in as well. The short ride to Barangay Bago Gallera was uneventful but as they cruised down Talomo National Hiway a white Toyota Revo cargo van almost passed them at a high rate of speed but as it pulled abreast of Peliciano's triksiad a male passenger was staring daggers at the passengers before the van decelerated and fell in behind the triksiad. Then, 300 meters before the Gallera de Oro Subdivision's entrance, that same white van did finally pass them but then immediately cut in front of them as it slammed on its brakes.
As Peliciano stopped his triksiad two men jumped out of the van wielding 45 caliber pistols. As the female passenger, Dina Talaboc, and Danny Peliciano began to quickly climb out of their seats the two male passengers both grabbed Rebelyn. Both Peliciano and Ms.Talaboc ran screaming as Rebelyn pleaded with them to help her. As Peliciano turned around, perhaps feeling guilty about leaving Rebelyn to her unfortunate fate, the two gunmen drew down on him and warned him to keep running. As Peliciano did just that, not stopping until he got to the Talomo District Police Station, while Rebelyn was dragged into the van which then sped off into the night.
At the police station officers listened to whay for them is a run of the mill report and then brought Peliciano with them as they notified Rebelyn's mother Evangeline. Knowing the significance of the purported victim they immediately notified police brass who in turn notified Davao City Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte. Counter-intuitively Duterte is NOT anti-NPA. In fact, after first becoming in Mayor in 1988 he surrendered more than 40% of his city to Leonicio Pitao along with a quarterly stipend in exchange for Pitao guaranteeing to keep the NPA out of the rest of the city. In the mid-1980s, the NPA in Davao City turned Mindanao's population centre into a veritible blood bath. Duterte's concession spared the bulk of the city's population and virtually business interests from that very real concern.
As the province around Davao City, Davao del Sur, continued to suffer the pains of insurgency Davao City proper was a magnet for investment, the one place investors felt assured of avoiding the pressures of armed attack, Kidnap for Ransom (KFR), and of course, in NPA-speak, "Revolutionary Taxes." The relationship was highly advantageous to both Duterte AND Pitao. While it cut the latter off from significant streams of revenue, AFP Intelligence estimates that by the time Rebelyn's murder took place, in the First Quarter of 2009, Pitao's Southern Mindanao Regional Committee, the SMRC- which covers parts of North Cotabato, Surigao del Sur, and Agusan del Sur Provinces in addition to all of the Davao Region, aka Region 11- was raking in an impressive P20 Million every Quarter just from the Davao Region's four provinces alone. Of course that P20 Million, equal to nearly $500,000, is a conservative estimate. Ergo, losing the 60% of Davao City which contained the city's industrial AND commercial base hasn't hurt the NPA in the least. Consigning the 40% of the city0containing its most rural districts has allowed the NPA to develop a power base that is just about untouchable at this point.
Therefore then-Mayor Duterte was very concerned about what had transpired within his city's borders. As powerful as Duterte is, and make no mistake he is VERY powerful, he has nothing on Leonicio Pitao. Pitao had stupidly entrusted his family's safety- their very lives- to Duterte's "deal," and now the man's daughter had been violently abducted. It must have been a rare sleepless night for the Mayor, and a long day afterwards as the media descended upon City Hall. The mystery didn't last long though...
At 530PM the next day, March 5th, 2009, rice farmer Rafael "Raffy" Agres and his friend Noel Lanoy, a labourer on a nearby banana plantation, were walking down a dirt road in the nearby municipality of Carmen, in Davao del Norte Province. As the two walked Raffy happened to glance into a shallow irrigation canal running parallel to the road. All of a sudden he stopped and screamed that he had just seen a body. Noel looked to see for himself and soon realised that what he had first assumed to be a fallen banana trunk was actually a person's body. Raffy excitedly opined that it had to be a "Salvaging" victim, a comment that some might find highly curious if they aren't all that familiar with our fair isle. Indeed, inside of Davao City alone the Church-based NGO "Tambayan Center for Childrens' Rights" had recorded 894 "Salvaging" victims just in a 10 year period, in other words, on average 89 people a year were executed extra-judicially. Of those 894, 80 were under the age of 18 with the youngest being 12 years old (and some readers actually wonder why I use Duterte as a verbal punching bag!). Indeed, in that very same spot where that body had just been sighted, a Salvaging victim had been dumped 5 years before.
The unnamed road, in Barangay San Isidro is bereft of much more than rice paddies. The only house in sight of the body is that of Egles Brieta and her family. Curiously, despite the home being less than 100 meters away the killers, or their compatriots, had chosen that exact spot to dump at least two bodies. Moreover, despite vehicular traffic almost never passing down the road, neither Ms.Brieta nor anyone in her family hear anything on either occasion.
The Carmen Municipal Police Office, like all area police stations, had been alerted to the Rebelyn Pitao Abduction and upon learning that the body was female alerted the Davao del Norte Police Provincial Office, or PPO. As soon as operatives arrived and compared a stock photo of the missing girl to the partially nude body in the canal, they knew that Rebelyn Pitao was no longer missing. Her discovery didn't shock her family at all. The initial shock of realising that whomever had abducted her Rebelyn had tossed all the heretofore (unofficial) Rules of Engagement out with the trash had quickly dissipated. After that initial shock disappeared her entire family knew that if she ever surfaced it would be as a cadaver.
After recovering Rebelyn's body it was transported to a local funeral home. In the Philippines autopsies are rarely- if ever- performed under clinical conditions. A private physician contracted to an agency performs at the funeral home. Obviously nothing too technical is ever performed OR discovered. In Rebelyn's autopsy the attending physician (he is not a pathologist of course) noted rope burns on her neck, five puncture wounds, all with the same ice pick-like implement, two above her left breast, two below that same breast, both of which lacerated her liver, and one in her lung, and most troubling of all, she had been raped by a materiel object. The only "good news," and I mean this strictly in the relative sense, is that she had died before midnite. Having been found 60 kilometers from the abduction site, where she was taken at nearly 7PM, she wouldn't have suffered excruciatingly long. Her attackers finished her off rather quickly.
Within two days Leonicio Pitao named four AFP Military Agents attached to Military Intelligence Group-11 (MIG-11), operating out of an AFP safehouse in Panabo City, just over the border from Davao City's Paquibato District:
1) Sergeant Helvin Bitang
2) Corporal Orly Pedring Pedregosa
3) Sergeant Ben Tipait
4) Sergeant Adan Masluao
While many outside the security echelon wondered just why the AFP refused to act on Pitao's information many within the AFP at least brushed off Pitao's "information" as ridiculous nonsense. First of all, Ben Tipait and Adan Masluao don't exist, at least under those names. Secondly, both of the two actual men named happened to have been Danilo Santiago's AFP handlers- Santiago of course being Pitao's brother. Pitao's claims of an "NPA investigation" was sheer bufoonery. Worse yet, his publicising these men's names was consigning them to, at the very least, lives of extreme paranoia, if not an actual torturous murder.
Leonicio Pitao was fully aware that his brother Danilo had been killed by an NPA SPARU Team. SPARU, or Specially Armed Partisan Units, often misrepresented as "Sparrows," are three to five man teams of highly experienced NPA cadres. Almost always in their late 20s or early 30s, and thereby having at least 15 years experience as NPA guerillas, they are basically the NPA's Extra-Judicial Execution entities though unlike their counterparts in the AFP, they never engage in abductions. The NPA likes to claim it has a form of Due Process, that it "arrests" people who have been "charged" in their so called "People's Court." In reality, no such court exists outside of one or two high ranking members ordering an execution and if the SPARU gets your name, rest assured that they are being sent to kill you, not arrest you.
Although his sister Evelyn was killed a year later, in 2010, her death is quite instructive. Soon after Evelyn was murdered (along with her common law husband), the NPA's political wing, the CPP, issued a media release in which it noted Evelyn's death. They accused the AFP, whom they labeled as "fascist," and said that Evelyn's death had been designed to "break" Leonicio Pitao's "spirits." By the end of the month however, the organisation had opted to come clean. The NPA itself then issued a media release in which it admitted that Evelyn had been killed with Pitao's full knowledge (indeed he had ordered it). It even credited the killing to the SMRC's own SPARU Team, the Ka Paking Guimbaolibot Red Partisan Brigade.
It wouldn't take long though for Leonicio Pitao to begin adding other names to what seems to be an ever expanding list of "guilty" AFP personnel. By the time April 1st, 2009 came around, three and a half weeks after Rebelyn's terrible death, Pitao had publicly listed thirteen men, all AFP Intelligence Agents or Assets, the latter simply men just like Danilo Santiago, strongarmed into serving as sources or spies. April 1st was the day that then Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Leila de Lima- currently serving the Aquino Administration as its Secretary of the DOJ, or Department of Justice- hastily convened a three day Hearing on the Rebelyn Pitao Murder.
I will continue with the third and final part of this entry shortly...
Their brother Danilo, who in 1985 changed his surname to Santiago so as to stay one step ahead of inquisitive bureaucrats as he first attempted to leave the Philippines to serve aboard ocean going freighters, had stayed clear of the Maoist Insurgency that had seduced his brother and sister. I discussed both his sad fate and perhaps the poetically justified fate of Evelyn, but left the jist of my entry for this, the second and concluding part.
Rebelyn Maasin Pitao was Leonicio and his wife Evangeline Maasin Pitao's third child. Though the only one of their five children to be given a "revolutionary" name, Rebelyn was anything but a rebel. A quiet, selfless, unassuming young lady, she had not gravitated towards her father's activities or even his political leanings. Instead ahe had gained a university education and began working as a substitute teacher at Saint Peter's College of Technology in her hometown of Davao City.
Each morning at 630AM Rebelyn would leave her mother's home in Gallera de Oro Subdivision in Davao City's Talomo District. Walking the quiet streets of Barangay Bago Gallera she would catch a triksiad, or motorcycle sidecar taxi, to jeepney terminal in Barangay Bago Aplaya where she would then take a jeepney to the school where she eagerly welcomed her second grade students. At 445PM each day she would leave the school and walk to the Terminal where she would take her second triksiad of the day, always arriving at home by 645PM. It was this regular schedule that ended up costing Rebelyn Maasin Pitao her life.
On the evening of March 4th, 2009, Rebelyn climbed into Danny Peliciano's triksiad for the return trip home. A middle aged female passenger, Dina Talaboc, was already waiting, and just before Peliciano got ready to leave the terminal, two men in their late 20s or early 30s climbed in as well. The short ride to Barangay Bago Gallera was uneventful but as they cruised down Talomo National Hiway a white Toyota Revo cargo van almost passed them at a high rate of speed but as it pulled abreast of Peliciano's triksiad a male passenger was staring daggers at the passengers before the van decelerated and fell in behind the triksiad. Then, 300 meters before the Gallera de Oro Subdivision's entrance, that same white van did finally pass them but then immediately cut in front of them as it slammed on its brakes.
As Peliciano stopped his triksiad two men jumped out of the van wielding 45 caliber pistols. As the female passenger, Dina Talaboc, and Danny Peliciano began to quickly climb out of their seats the two male passengers both grabbed Rebelyn. Both Peliciano and Ms.Talaboc ran screaming as Rebelyn pleaded with them to help her. As Peliciano turned around, perhaps feeling guilty about leaving Rebelyn to her unfortunate fate, the two gunmen drew down on him and warned him to keep running. As Peliciano did just that, not stopping until he got to the Talomo District Police Station, while Rebelyn was dragged into the van which then sped off into the night.
At the police station officers listened to whay for them is a run of the mill report and then brought Peliciano with them as they notified Rebelyn's mother Evangeline. Knowing the significance of the purported victim they immediately notified police brass who in turn notified Davao City Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte. Counter-intuitively Duterte is NOT anti-NPA. In fact, after first becoming in Mayor in 1988 he surrendered more than 40% of his city to Leonicio Pitao along with a quarterly stipend in exchange for Pitao guaranteeing to keep the NPA out of the rest of the city. In the mid-1980s, the NPA in Davao City turned Mindanao's population centre into a veritible blood bath. Duterte's concession spared the bulk of the city's population and virtually business interests from that very real concern.
As the province around Davao City, Davao del Sur, continued to suffer the pains of insurgency Davao City proper was a magnet for investment, the one place investors felt assured of avoiding the pressures of armed attack, Kidnap for Ransom (KFR), and of course, in NPA-speak, "Revolutionary Taxes." The relationship was highly advantageous to both Duterte AND Pitao. While it cut the latter off from significant streams of revenue, AFP Intelligence estimates that by the time Rebelyn's murder took place, in the First Quarter of 2009, Pitao's Southern Mindanao Regional Committee, the SMRC- which covers parts of North Cotabato, Surigao del Sur, and Agusan del Sur Provinces in addition to all of the Davao Region, aka Region 11- was raking in an impressive P20 Million every Quarter just from the Davao Region's four provinces alone. Of course that P20 Million, equal to nearly $500,000, is a conservative estimate. Ergo, losing the 60% of Davao City which contained the city's industrial AND commercial base hasn't hurt the NPA in the least. Consigning the 40% of the city0containing its most rural districts has allowed the NPA to develop a power base that is just about untouchable at this point.
Therefore then-Mayor Duterte was very concerned about what had transpired within his city's borders. As powerful as Duterte is, and make no mistake he is VERY powerful, he has nothing on Leonicio Pitao. Pitao had stupidly entrusted his family's safety- their very lives- to Duterte's "deal," and now the man's daughter had been violently abducted. It must have been a rare sleepless night for the Mayor, and a long day afterwards as the media descended upon City Hall. The mystery didn't last long though...
At 530PM the next day, March 5th, 2009, rice farmer Rafael "Raffy" Agres and his friend Noel Lanoy, a labourer on a nearby banana plantation, were walking down a dirt road in the nearby municipality of Carmen, in Davao del Norte Province. As the two walked Raffy happened to glance into a shallow irrigation canal running parallel to the road. All of a sudden he stopped and screamed that he had just seen a body. Noel looked to see for himself and soon realised that what he had first assumed to be a fallen banana trunk was actually a person's body. Raffy excitedly opined that it had to be a "Salvaging" victim, a comment that some might find highly curious if they aren't all that familiar with our fair isle. Indeed, inside of Davao City alone the Church-based NGO "Tambayan Center for Childrens' Rights" had recorded 894 "Salvaging" victims just in a 10 year period, in other words, on average 89 people a year were executed extra-judicially. Of those 894, 80 were under the age of 18 with the youngest being 12 years old (and some readers actually wonder why I use Duterte as a verbal punching bag!). Indeed, in that very same spot where that body had just been sighted, a Salvaging victim had been dumped 5 years before.
The unnamed road, in Barangay San Isidro is bereft of much more than rice paddies. The only house in sight of the body is that of Egles Brieta and her family. Curiously, despite the home being less than 100 meters away the killers, or their compatriots, had chosen that exact spot to dump at least two bodies. Moreover, despite vehicular traffic almost never passing down the road, neither Ms.Brieta nor anyone in her family hear anything on either occasion.
The Carmen Municipal Police Office, like all area police stations, had been alerted to the Rebelyn Pitao Abduction and upon learning that the body was female alerted the Davao del Norte Police Provincial Office, or PPO. As soon as operatives arrived and compared a stock photo of the missing girl to the partially nude body in the canal, they knew that Rebelyn Pitao was no longer missing. Her discovery didn't shock her family at all. The initial shock of realising that whomever had abducted her Rebelyn had tossed all the heretofore (unofficial) Rules of Engagement out with the trash had quickly dissipated. After that initial shock disappeared her entire family knew that if she ever surfaced it would be as a cadaver.
After recovering Rebelyn's body it was transported to a local funeral home. In the Philippines autopsies are rarely- if ever- performed under clinical conditions. A private physician contracted to an agency performs at the funeral home. Obviously nothing too technical is ever performed OR discovered. In Rebelyn's autopsy the attending physician (he is not a pathologist of course) noted rope burns on her neck, five puncture wounds, all with the same ice pick-like implement, two above her left breast, two below that same breast, both of which lacerated her liver, and one in her lung, and most troubling of all, she had been raped by a materiel object. The only "good news," and I mean this strictly in the relative sense, is that she had died before midnite. Having been found 60 kilometers from the abduction site, where she was taken at nearly 7PM, she wouldn't have suffered excruciatingly long. Her attackers finished her off rather quickly.
Within two days Leonicio Pitao named four AFP Military Agents attached to Military Intelligence Group-11 (MIG-11), operating out of an AFP safehouse in Panabo City, just over the border from Davao City's Paquibato District:
1) Sergeant Helvin Bitang
2) Corporal Orly Pedring Pedregosa
3) Sergeant Ben Tipait
4) Sergeant Adan Masluao
While many outside the security echelon wondered just why the AFP refused to act on Pitao's information many within the AFP at least brushed off Pitao's "information" as ridiculous nonsense. First of all, Ben Tipait and Adan Masluao don't exist, at least under those names. Secondly, both of the two actual men named happened to have been Danilo Santiago's AFP handlers- Santiago of course being Pitao's brother. Pitao's claims of an "NPA investigation" was sheer bufoonery. Worse yet, his publicising these men's names was consigning them to, at the very least, lives of extreme paranoia, if not an actual torturous murder.
Leonicio Pitao was fully aware that his brother Danilo had been killed by an NPA SPARU Team. SPARU, or Specially Armed Partisan Units, often misrepresented as "Sparrows," are three to five man teams of highly experienced NPA cadres. Almost always in their late 20s or early 30s, and thereby having at least 15 years experience as NPA guerillas, they are basically the NPA's Extra-Judicial Execution entities though unlike their counterparts in the AFP, they never engage in abductions. The NPA likes to claim it has a form of Due Process, that it "arrests" people who have been "charged" in their so called "People's Court." In reality, no such court exists outside of one or two high ranking members ordering an execution and if the SPARU gets your name, rest assured that they are being sent to kill you, not arrest you.
Although his sister Evelyn was killed a year later, in 2010, her death is quite instructive. Soon after Evelyn was murdered (along with her common law husband), the NPA's political wing, the CPP, issued a media release in which it noted Evelyn's death. They accused the AFP, whom they labeled as "fascist," and said that Evelyn's death had been designed to "break" Leonicio Pitao's "spirits." By the end of the month however, the organisation had opted to come clean. The NPA itself then issued a media release in which it admitted that Evelyn had been killed with Pitao's full knowledge (indeed he had ordered it). It even credited the killing to the SMRC's own SPARU Team, the Ka Paking Guimbaolibot Red Partisan Brigade.
It wouldn't take long though for Leonicio Pitao to begin adding other names to what seems to be an ever expanding list of "guilty" AFP personnel. By the time April 1st, 2009 came around, three and a half weeks after Rebelyn's terrible death, Pitao had publicly listed thirteen men, all AFP Intelligence Agents or Assets, the latter simply men just like Danilo Santiago, strongarmed into serving as sources or spies. April 1st was the day that then Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Leila de Lima- currently serving the Aquino Administration as its Secretary of the DOJ, or Department of Justice- hastily convened a three day Hearing on the Rebelyn Pitao Murder.
I will continue with the third and final part of this entry shortly...
Thursday, November 17, 2011
NPA Armed Contacts for the Fourth Quarter of 2011, Part XII: The Ghost of Rebelyn Pitao wont be Silenced, Part 1
The sad death of Reblyn Maasin Pitao of Davao City transpired nearly three years ago and yet its consequences are still playing out today. Ms.Pitao, a newly-graduated substitute teacher at Davao City's Saint Peter's College was the third child of Leonicio Pitao and Evangeline Maasin Pitao. Mr.Pitao is much better known by his nom de guerre, "Ka Parago," the name he utilises as the top NPA Commander in the Davao Region.
The Secretary, or Leader, of the SMRC, or Southern Mindanao Regional Committee's Merardo Arce Operational Command, Pitao also personally commands the Operational Command's company sized military element, the 1st Pulang Bagani Command, or 1PBC. From a base on the slopes of the Philippines' tallest mountain, Mount Apo, Pitao oversees all large scale tactical operations in the Davao Region, also known as Region 11, which comprises the following four provinces:
1) Davao del Sur
2) Davao del Norte
3) Davao Oriental
4) Compostela Valley, also known as "ComVal"
This region also holds the nation's second most populous city, Davao City. Because of a marriage of convenience between Pitao and that city's warlord, now-Vice Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte Pitao's personal fiefdom also includes a full 40% of that chartered city, albeit none of its urganised and therefore financially lucrative environs. Although the NEMRC, or Northeastern Mindanao Regional Committee has more manpower, and generates much more revenue for the organisation, Pitao's SMRC is viewed as the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) primary objective in its struggle to neutralise the NPA Insurgency. This is because the region is much, much more populous than the NEMRC's Region 13, also known as Caraga. While Caraga has much more in the way of natural resources, Davao Region is the Mindanao's industrial base. Controlling Davao Region offers the NPA incredible power but more so, leaves it posing a real threat to overall control of Mindanao.
Therefore, it is rather easy to understand the AFP's fixation on Leonicio Pitao. After finally apprehending him in the Autumn of 2009 he was released after little less than a year as a Good Will Gesture of the Arroyo Administration as it sought to lure the NPA back to the bargaining table in the two decades old GPH-NDFP Peace Process ("GPH" being the Government of the Philippines and "NDFP" being the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the political umbrella representing the NPA and its political wing, the CPP, or Communist Party of the Philippines in the Peace Process). To describe the AFP as "frustrated" vis a vis the Davao Region NPA resillience and its iconic figurehead Leonicio Pitao's ability to outsmart and outlast dozens of AFP Chiefs of Staff would be an extreme understatement. Indeed, the AFP created a new division, the 10ID (Infantry Division), and a new Regional Command, EASMINCOM (Eastern Mindanao Command), to more effectively deal with Pitao and his counterpart in the NEMRC, Jorge "Ka Oris" Madlos. Yet nothing has worked.
Not suprisingly more than a few AFP officers vexed with Pitao have undertaken unofficial avenues as they searched for an effective remedy. In 2008, a man on the payroll of Davao del Norte Province, blessed with an almost impossible to get no show job, was gunned down by people he knew on the front steps of Our Lady of Fatima, a Catholic Church in Tagum City's Barangay Mankilam, Purok Villa Cacacho in the aforementioned province of Davao del Norte.
The man, Danilo Santiago, had been a "seaman," Filipino speak for the national equivalent of a Merchant Marine. When he first went to see more than decades before, in 1985, he had changed his surname to Santiago, apprehensive that his birth name would keep him from gaining the necessary clearances needed to work in that industry. After all, his real surname, "Pitao" was known to the kind of people that could make those sorts of decisions. Although the brother of Leonicio Pitao he hadn't seen the NPA leader in nearly a decade. When he finally gave up travelling the world aboard ocean going freighters in 1995, to care for the three children abandoned by his estranged wife, he took a job as short order cook in Panabo City's Maria Clara Resturant. It was this job that would prove pivotal in Danilo Santiago's life.
Apparently recognised at his resturant job in 2007 he found himself dumbfounded when he learned that the AFP, or Armed Forces of the Philippines, was sizing him up quietly. His primary concern was that he was being primed for "Salvaging," the Filipino term for Extra-Judicial Execution. In the twelve years since he had stopped working abroad he had met a new woman, Mary Jean Espira, and began a new family. Life was going well for Danilo, until he was fingered. When the whispers of neighbours graduated into SMS (texts) and phone calls on his cellphone he realised that he had to act to save himself and perhaps his family. Travelling to the adjacent municipality of Davao City on May 23rd, 2007, he presented himself at the AFP's Camp Panacan. Within an hour he heard his name called and was ushered down a maze of hallways before finally arriving at a door without the requisite nameplate, the Headquarters of MIG-11, or, the 11th Military Intelligence Group. Interviewed by Captain Ramos (now with the 73IB), he was pointedly asked if he wanted to live to see his young children grow to adulthood. Danilo Santiago left Camp Panacan as a Military Asset, trading on his familial relationship with Leonicio Pitao. In return for assenting, he was issued a military stock 45 caliber pistol, ordered to report on the first Monday of every month, and sit back and wait to be activated by a handler, or controller.
Although Danilo was initially unaware, another of his siblings, his sister Evelyn, had also become a Military Asset when cornered as an NPA guerilla in Front 3, the Alejandro Lanaja Command, also in the SMRC. Like Danilo, she had been given an assumed identity, re-named Iris Belen Berano, and had used her earnings from the AFP to become a broker of hardwood timber. Also like Danilo, her decision would have a far reaching impact. It had been Evelyn Pitao who in the Autumn of 1999 had fed her handlers the all important information that led to Leonicio's capture in Davao City's Barangay Bago Gallera. For that coup, and setting up her husband, Regenaldo "Ka Emong" Alicaba Sr., the Vice Secretary of Front 33, the Armando Dumandan Command, again, in the SMRC. Evelyn had learned through her contacts that Alicaba had left the jungle on December 24th, 2008, with his 27 year old daughter, Rizalyn Alicaba Manguilimotan, Front 33's Medical Secretary, and travelled to an NPA safehouse in Panabo City's Barangay JP Laurel in order to receive needed medical treatment in Davao City.
Fingering Alicaba and his daughter for apprehension earned Evelyn a death sentence from the NPA. Yet, even as news broke about Alicaba's arrest on Janurary 18th, 2009 and the subsequent torture he allegedly suffered she remained in her adopted home town of Santo Tomas, but her time would come...
On May, 2008, a MIG-11 handler, Sergeant Helvin Bitang, arrived and picked up Danilo on his motorcycle, but this was a regular occurrence. Like many Assets Danilo had become friendly with his handler, and the two spent many a night carousing when they weren't actually working. That night Sergeant Bitang needed Danilo to pick up his allotment of free rice from the provincial capital complex in Tagum City. As someone on the provincial payroll Danilo was entitled to a free sack of rice from the Government Reserves as a sort of quasi-official fringe benefit. Being passive he was easily manipulated into regularly giving it to his "friend," Sergeant Bitang. Because Bitang drove a relatively small motorcycle the large sack of rice relegated Danilo to taking alternative transportation home that night, though Bitang at least covered the cost. Danilo was returning home by triksiad, the motorcycle sidecar taxis that poor Filipinos use in place of vehicular taxis. As the triksiad approached Our Lady of Fatima a motorcycle with two men riding tandem pulled abreast of Danilo. Danilo seemed to recognise the rear passenger according to the triksiad driver, because Danilo grinned widely. The man on the rear smiled right back as he raised his arm and squuezed off two shots from his 45 caliber pistol. Danilo literally jumped out of the moving triksiad and made a run for it. As the triksiad driver- against good judgement perhaps- pulled to the curb, he heard Danilo shout to the gunman who by now had dismounted from the motorcycle, "Unsa man ni bay!?" (Why are you doing this buddy?), lending even more creedence to the idea that Danilo knew his attacker. As Danilo reached the church steps his killer dropped him with yet another round and yet Danilo was still alive. Walking slowly up to him the gunman reached down, removed Danilo's holstered 45 pistol and then emptied its clip into Danilo, thereby killing him with his own gun. He then walked slowly over to the idling motorcycle, climbed onto the back, and disappeared into the night.
At the time of Danilo Santiago's killing just about everyone outside a narrow community within the security establishment bought into Leonicio Pitao and the NPA's claim that it had been MIG-11 that had killed Danilo. In the days following Danilo's burial his widow Mary Jean would suddenly recall that on the day he left with Sergeant Bitang, the handler had stood staring at Danilo's young children and had remarked in somber tones that it would have been a shame had Danilo not been able to watch his children grow up. The widow claims that at that moment she hadn't thought much of the remark and had even replied something to the effect that "yes, it is lucky for Danilo that you didn't have him executed before he approached your colleagues at Camp Panacan." Whether or not that exchange ever even took place, or, if it did, that it took place on the same evening of his death, the fact remains that Danilo Santiago was working as a spy, trying to reel in his brother and his brother's high ranking colleagues in the Southern Mindanao Regional Committee. Although Pitao was aware of Danilo's occupation- indeed, Danilo had told him soon after taking it- Danilo may have been perceived to have played a role in recent tactical reversals. You canno serve two masters, one will always grow dangerously dissatisfied. The AFP had no reason to harm Danilo, he was fully compliant to a fault. The one entity that DID have a real motive was the NPA.
Indeed, on May 23rd, 2010, Leonicio Pitao had his sister Evelyn murdered (along with her common law husband Roberto Dadula) in their new hometown of Santo Tomas, in Davao del Norte Province. Although the NPA allowed everyone to point the finger at the AFP the NPA finally came clean and admitted that it had Evelyn killed. The reason? Her role as a Military Asset working against the NPA...just like Danilo Santiago had been.
In between the murder of both Leonicio Pitao's two siblings, an even more disturbing case transpired. Rebelyn Maasin Pitao had been cursed from birth. A girl named "Rebellion" (phonetically) will be challenged no matter what else happens in her life, and yet there was every reason to believe Rebelyn had triumphed over adversity as she approached her 21st birthday.
I will close this entry here and resume in "Part 2."
The Secretary, or Leader, of the SMRC, or Southern Mindanao Regional Committee's Merardo Arce Operational Command, Pitao also personally commands the Operational Command's company sized military element, the 1st Pulang Bagani Command, or 1PBC. From a base on the slopes of the Philippines' tallest mountain, Mount Apo, Pitao oversees all large scale tactical operations in the Davao Region, also known as Region 11, which comprises the following four provinces:
1) Davao del Sur
2) Davao del Norte
3) Davao Oriental
4) Compostela Valley, also known as "ComVal"
This region also holds the nation's second most populous city, Davao City. Because of a marriage of convenience between Pitao and that city's warlord, now-Vice Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte Pitao's personal fiefdom also includes a full 40% of that chartered city, albeit none of its urganised and therefore financially lucrative environs. Although the NEMRC, or Northeastern Mindanao Regional Committee has more manpower, and generates much more revenue for the organisation, Pitao's SMRC is viewed as the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) primary objective in its struggle to neutralise the NPA Insurgency. This is because the region is much, much more populous than the NEMRC's Region 13, also known as Caraga. While Caraga has much more in the way of natural resources, Davao Region is the Mindanao's industrial base. Controlling Davao Region offers the NPA incredible power but more so, leaves it posing a real threat to overall control of Mindanao.
Therefore, it is rather easy to understand the AFP's fixation on Leonicio Pitao. After finally apprehending him in the Autumn of 2009 he was released after little less than a year as a Good Will Gesture of the Arroyo Administration as it sought to lure the NPA back to the bargaining table in the two decades old GPH-NDFP Peace Process ("GPH" being the Government of the Philippines and "NDFP" being the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the political umbrella representing the NPA and its political wing, the CPP, or Communist Party of the Philippines in the Peace Process). To describe the AFP as "frustrated" vis a vis the Davao Region NPA resillience and its iconic figurehead Leonicio Pitao's ability to outsmart and outlast dozens of AFP Chiefs of Staff would be an extreme understatement. Indeed, the AFP created a new division, the 10ID (Infantry Division), and a new Regional Command, EASMINCOM (Eastern Mindanao Command), to more effectively deal with Pitao and his counterpart in the NEMRC, Jorge "Ka Oris" Madlos. Yet nothing has worked.
Not suprisingly more than a few AFP officers vexed with Pitao have undertaken unofficial avenues as they searched for an effective remedy. In 2008, a man on the payroll of Davao del Norte Province, blessed with an almost impossible to get no show job, was gunned down by people he knew on the front steps of Our Lady of Fatima, a Catholic Church in Tagum City's Barangay Mankilam, Purok Villa Cacacho in the aforementioned province of Davao del Norte.
The man, Danilo Santiago, had been a "seaman," Filipino speak for the national equivalent of a Merchant Marine. When he first went to see more than decades before, in 1985, he had changed his surname to Santiago, apprehensive that his birth name would keep him from gaining the necessary clearances needed to work in that industry. After all, his real surname, "Pitao" was known to the kind of people that could make those sorts of decisions. Although the brother of Leonicio Pitao he hadn't seen the NPA leader in nearly a decade. When he finally gave up travelling the world aboard ocean going freighters in 1995, to care for the three children abandoned by his estranged wife, he took a job as short order cook in Panabo City's Maria Clara Resturant. It was this job that would prove pivotal in Danilo Santiago's life.
Apparently recognised at his resturant job in 2007 he found himself dumbfounded when he learned that the AFP, or Armed Forces of the Philippines, was sizing him up quietly. His primary concern was that he was being primed for "Salvaging," the Filipino term for Extra-Judicial Execution. In the twelve years since he had stopped working abroad he had met a new woman, Mary Jean Espira, and began a new family. Life was going well for Danilo, until he was fingered. When the whispers of neighbours graduated into SMS (texts) and phone calls on his cellphone he realised that he had to act to save himself and perhaps his family. Travelling to the adjacent municipality of Davao City on May 23rd, 2007, he presented himself at the AFP's Camp Panacan. Within an hour he heard his name called and was ushered down a maze of hallways before finally arriving at a door without the requisite nameplate, the Headquarters of MIG-11, or, the 11th Military Intelligence Group. Interviewed by Captain Ramos (now with the 73IB), he was pointedly asked if he wanted to live to see his young children grow to adulthood. Danilo Santiago left Camp Panacan as a Military Asset, trading on his familial relationship with Leonicio Pitao. In return for assenting, he was issued a military stock 45 caliber pistol, ordered to report on the first Monday of every month, and sit back and wait to be activated by a handler, or controller.
Although Danilo was initially unaware, another of his siblings, his sister Evelyn, had also become a Military Asset when cornered as an NPA guerilla in Front 3, the Alejandro Lanaja Command, also in the SMRC. Like Danilo, she had been given an assumed identity, re-named Iris Belen Berano, and had used her earnings from the AFP to become a broker of hardwood timber. Also like Danilo, her decision would have a far reaching impact. It had been Evelyn Pitao who in the Autumn of 1999 had fed her handlers the all important information that led to Leonicio's capture in Davao City's Barangay Bago Gallera. For that coup, and setting up her husband, Regenaldo "Ka Emong" Alicaba Sr., the Vice Secretary of Front 33, the Armando Dumandan Command, again, in the SMRC. Evelyn had learned through her contacts that Alicaba had left the jungle on December 24th, 2008, with his 27 year old daughter, Rizalyn Alicaba Manguilimotan, Front 33's Medical Secretary, and travelled to an NPA safehouse in Panabo City's Barangay JP Laurel in order to receive needed medical treatment in Davao City.
Fingering Alicaba and his daughter for apprehension earned Evelyn a death sentence from the NPA. Yet, even as news broke about Alicaba's arrest on Janurary 18th, 2009 and the subsequent torture he allegedly suffered she remained in her adopted home town of Santo Tomas, but her time would come...
On May, 2008, a MIG-11 handler, Sergeant Helvin Bitang, arrived and picked up Danilo on his motorcycle, but this was a regular occurrence. Like many Assets Danilo had become friendly with his handler, and the two spent many a night carousing when they weren't actually working. That night Sergeant Bitang needed Danilo to pick up his allotment of free rice from the provincial capital complex in Tagum City. As someone on the provincial payroll Danilo was entitled to a free sack of rice from the Government Reserves as a sort of quasi-official fringe benefit. Being passive he was easily manipulated into regularly giving it to his "friend," Sergeant Bitang. Because Bitang drove a relatively small motorcycle the large sack of rice relegated Danilo to taking alternative transportation home that night, though Bitang at least covered the cost. Danilo was returning home by triksiad, the motorcycle sidecar taxis that poor Filipinos use in place of vehicular taxis. As the triksiad approached Our Lady of Fatima a motorcycle with two men riding tandem pulled abreast of Danilo. Danilo seemed to recognise the rear passenger according to the triksiad driver, because Danilo grinned widely. The man on the rear smiled right back as he raised his arm and squuezed off two shots from his 45 caliber pistol. Danilo literally jumped out of the moving triksiad and made a run for it. As the triksiad driver- against good judgement perhaps- pulled to the curb, he heard Danilo shout to the gunman who by now had dismounted from the motorcycle, "Unsa man ni bay!?" (Why are you doing this buddy?), lending even more creedence to the idea that Danilo knew his attacker. As Danilo reached the church steps his killer dropped him with yet another round and yet Danilo was still alive. Walking slowly up to him the gunman reached down, removed Danilo's holstered 45 pistol and then emptied its clip into Danilo, thereby killing him with his own gun. He then walked slowly over to the idling motorcycle, climbed onto the back, and disappeared into the night.
At the time of Danilo Santiago's killing just about everyone outside a narrow community within the security establishment bought into Leonicio Pitao and the NPA's claim that it had been MIG-11 that had killed Danilo. In the days following Danilo's burial his widow Mary Jean would suddenly recall that on the day he left with Sergeant Bitang, the handler had stood staring at Danilo's young children and had remarked in somber tones that it would have been a shame had Danilo not been able to watch his children grow up. The widow claims that at that moment she hadn't thought much of the remark and had even replied something to the effect that "yes, it is lucky for Danilo that you didn't have him executed before he approached your colleagues at Camp Panacan." Whether or not that exchange ever even took place, or, if it did, that it took place on the same evening of his death, the fact remains that Danilo Santiago was working as a spy, trying to reel in his brother and his brother's high ranking colleagues in the Southern Mindanao Regional Committee. Although Pitao was aware of Danilo's occupation- indeed, Danilo had told him soon after taking it- Danilo may have been perceived to have played a role in recent tactical reversals. You canno serve two masters, one will always grow dangerously dissatisfied. The AFP had no reason to harm Danilo, he was fully compliant to a fault. The one entity that DID have a real motive was the NPA.
Indeed, on May 23rd, 2010, Leonicio Pitao had his sister Evelyn murdered (along with her common law husband Roberto Dadula) in their new hometown of Santo Tomas, in Davao del Norte Province. Although the NPA allowed everyone to point the finger at the AFP the NPA finally came clean and admitted that it had Evelyn killed. The reason? Her role as a Military Asset working against the NPA...just like Danilo Santiago had been.
In between the murder of both Leonicio Pitao's two siblings, an even more disturbing case transpired. Rebelyn Maasin Pitao had been cursed from birth. A girl named "Rebellion" (phonetically) will be challenged no matter what else happens in her life, and yet there was every reason to believe Rebelyn had triumphed over adversity as she approached her 21st birthday.
I will close this entry here and resume in "Part 2."
Thursday, November 10, 2011
NPA Armed Contacts for the Fourth Quarter of 2011, Part IX: Ka Parago Whispers Sweet Nothings to Colonel Paniza and Datu Labawan
The SMRC, or Southern Mindanao Regional Committee is one of five NPA Regional Commands on Mindanao. When discussing the SMRC one man usually comes to mind, Leonicio Pitao, better known by his nom de guerre, "Ka Parago." Pitao is a living legend here on Mindanao and is grudgingly admired by more than a few within the AFP for his ability to have brokered a favourable deal with then newly elected Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte in 1988. In exchange for 40% of Davao City and a healthy cash stipend on a monthly basis Pitao agred to relegate all NPA activity to that 40%, all of which were rural, outlying and undeveloped Districts, three in particular:
1) Paquibato
2) Toril
3) Calinan
and part of two others:
1) Baguio
2) Marilog
Before that deal was reached Davao City was an open battlefield at all hours of the day. Right Wing para militaries liked the infamous Alsa Masa (Masses Arise) did battle, as did the NPA, in most corners of the island's largest population centre. After the deal however, Davao City has become the island's, if not the nation's safest city. Of course Duterte's Davao Death Squad (see my two part series "You Can Die at Anytime: Davao Death Squad Through the Eyes of HRW") took ccare of the crime as well.
Over the years Pitao has weathered many storms, the physical purges of the mid-80s, the ideological purges of the early-90s under the NPA/CPP Re-affirmist scheme, an incarceration after being captured while visiting his family on All Souls Day 2, and mostly recently, the brutal Extra-Judicial Killing of his daughter Rebelyn, a substitute teacher with no political or militant involvement in March of 2009. Today Leonicio Pitao commands the the SEMRC's military operations as Secretary of its Military Command. He also personally command's the operations Command's company sized military entity, the PBC1, or 1st Pulang Bagani Company (Pulang Bagani meaning "Red Warrior"). From a set of rotating base camps high up the slopes of Mount Apo, the nation's highest peak, the NPA in Davao City remains just as firmly entrenched as it has ever been since withdrawing to the city's outer limits in 1988.
On October 1st, 2011, Pitao opened up the Fourth Quarter of 2011 by publicly ridiculing the Armed Forces of the Philippines, or AFP, for blaming the NPA for the abduction, and presumed killing of two local tribal leaders. The two missing men:
1) Datu Lorenzo Pendio
2) Datu Marcelino Gumatao
went missing on...According to the AFP's Colonel Lyndon Paniza, Commanding Officer of the 1003rd Infantry Brigade, the men were killed for not paying "Revolutionary Taxes," the politically correct euphanism used to tidy up rank extortion. Pitao claims that the NPA does not force civilians to pay "Sablag," NPA-speak for "rank extortion." Of course Pitao is lying through his teeth but hey, nobody's hands are clean on this island.
Pitao, not suprisingly, accuses Datu Ruben Labawan of doing his master's bidding. The "master" would of course be Colonel Paniza. Paniza's 1003rd Infantry Brigade entered into a pact with Datu Labawan back in 2002 when the brigade's then-Commanding Officer, Colonel Eduardo Rosario sanctioned an extant tribal paramilitary and commissioned it to operate against the NPA. Labawan, and his comrade in arms, Joel Unad then held a big to do where they whored their culture by not only declaring Rosario to be a tribal chieftain ("Datu"), but then-Secretary of the Department of National Defense, the late Angelo Reyes as well. Colonel cum Datu Rosario then naturally gave free rein to Unad and Labawan.
Their organisation, ATADI, or, Ata Tribal Association of Davao Incorporated, then used their paramilitary, the Alamara, to move peasants, including fellow tribesmen, off of land they planned to claim on the CADT Program (Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title), with an eye on both logging AND mining. The Alamara was dissolved under pressure from human rights groups but only in name because its members were simply enrolled in the AFP's CAA Program as CAFGU soldiers. It was only a matter of months before the Alamara slash CAFGU became the "Bagani Long Range Platoons." Different name, same game.
Pitao is also saying, or rather he said on October 1st, that the barangay captains of Paquibato District's Barangays Lumiad, Salapawan, Malibog, Tapak AND Mapula each got P250,000 ($5,700) for the barangay level approval of two extant mining exploration applications targeting those barangays. The applications, for:
1) Alberto Mining Corporation
2) Penson's Mining Corporation
Many of those same barangay captains, certainly Jaime Manyawron of Mapula and Domingo Boycala of Salapawan are ATADI front men. Pitao's problems with ATADI are more than a decade old. In theast of several attempts on Datu Ruben Labawan's life, on August 2nd, 2010, he and some other high ranking datus were en route to a "payong-payong" (community meeting) at the 1003rd Headquarters when their group of motorcycles was ambushed by Pitao's NPA guerillas who ended up killing two AFP soldiers deployed as a security detail to Labawan, one of which just happened to be his brother. So...Pitao says that the two abducted men were actually NPA supporters qho were kidnapped, and presumably killed, by ATADI so as to turn locals against the NPA and ignite a tribal war, or "Pangayaw."
Whomever abducted the two men, at this point it really doesn't matter, killed them.
1) Paquibato
2) Toril
3) Calinan
and part of two others:
1) Baguio
2) Marilog
Before that deal was reached Davao City was an open battlefield at all hours of the day. Right Wing para militaries liked the infamous Alsa Masa (Masses Arise) did battle, as did the NPA, in most corners of the island's largest population centre. After the deal however, Davao City has become the island's, if not the nation's safest city. Of course Duterte's Davao Death Squad (see my two part series "You Can Die at Anytime: Davao Death Squad Through the Eyes of HRW") took ccare of the crime as well.
Over the years Pitao has weathered many storms, the physical purges of the mid-80s, the ideological purges of the early-90s under the NPA/CPP Re-affirmist scheme, an incarceration after being captured while visiting his family on All Souls Day 2, and mostly recently, the brutal Extra-Judicial Killing of his daughter Rebelyn, a substitute teacher with no political or militant involvement in March of 2009. Today Leonicio Pitao commands the the SEMRC's military operations as Secretary of its Military Command. He also personally command's the operations Command's company sized military entity, the PBC1, or 1st Pulang Bagani Company (Pulang Bagani meaning "Red Warrior"). From a set of rotating base camps high up the slopes of Mount Apo, the nation's highest peak, the NPA in Davao City remains just as firmly entrenched as it has ever been since withdrawing to the city's outer limits in 1988.
On October 1st, 2011, Pitao opened up the Fourth Quarter of 2011 by publicly ridiculing the Armed Forces of the Philippines, or AFP, for blaming the NPA for the abduction, and presumed killing of two local tribal leaders. The two missing men:
1) Datu Lorenzo Pendio
2) Datu Marcelino Gumatao
went missing on...According to the AFP's Colonel Lyndon Paniza, Commanding Officer of the 1003rd Infantry Brigade, the men were killed for not paying "Revolutionary Taxes," the politically correct euphanism used to tidy up rank extortion. Pitao claims that the NPA does not force civilians to pay "Sablag," NPA-speak for "rank extortion." Of course Pitao is lying through his teeth but hey, nobody's hands are clean on this island.
Pitao, not suprisingly, accuses Datu Ruben Labawan of doing his master's bidding. The "master" would of course be Colonel Paniza. Paniza's 1003rd Infantry Brigade entered into a pact with Datu Labawan back in 2002 when the brigade's then-Commanding Officer, Colonel Eduardo Rosario sanctioned an extant tribal paramilitary and commissioned it to operate against the NPA. Labawan, and his comrade in arms, Joel Unad then held a big to do where they whored their culture by not only declaring Rosario to be a tribal chieftain ("Datu"), but then-Secretary of the Department of National Defense, the late Angelo Reyes as well. Colonel cum Datu Rosario then naturally gave free rein to Unad and Labawan.
Their organisation, ATADI, or, Ata Tribal Association of Davao Incorporated, then used their paramilitary, the Alamara, to move peasants, including fellow tribesmen, off of land they planned to claim on the CADT Program (Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title), with an eye on both logging AND mining. The Alamara was dissolved under pressure from human rights groups but only in name because its members were simply enrolled in the AFP's CAA Program as CAFGU soldiers. It was only a matter of months before the Alamara slash CAFGU became the "Bagani Long Range Platoons." Different name, same game.
Pitao is also saying, or rather he said on October 1st, that the barangay captains of Paquibato District's Barangays Lumiad, Salapawan, Malibog, Tapak AND Mapula each got P250,000 ($5,700) for the barangay level approval of two extant mining exploration applications targeting those barangays. The applications, for:
1) Alberto Mining Corporation
2) Penson's Mining Corporation
Many of those same barangay captains, certainly Jaime Manyawron of Mapula and Domingo Boycala of Salapawan are ATADI front men. Pitao's problems with ATADI are more than a decade old. In theast of several attempts on Datu Ruben Labawan's life, on August 2nd, 2010, he and some other high ranking datus were en route to a "payong-payong" (community meeting) at the 1003rd Headquarters when their group of motorcycles was ambushed by Pitao's NPA guerillas who ended up killing two AFP soldiers deployed as a security detail to Labawan, one of which just happened to be his brother. So...Pitao says that the two abducted men were actually NPA supporters qho were kidnapped, and presumably killed, by ATADI so as to turn locals against the NPA and ignite a tribal war, or "Pangayaw."
Whomever abducted the two men, at this point it really doesn't matter, killed them.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
NPA Armed Contacts for the Third Quarter of 2011, Part VI: Davao Region Turns Hot Again
After a sweet quiet spell, albeit far too brief, the NPA's SMRC, or Southern Mindanao Regional Committee, has once again greased up its rifles and begun making itself heard. On September 17th in Davao City's Barangay Paradise Embac in Paquibato District the NPA's PBC1, or 1st Pulang Bagani Company (1st Red Warrior Company) harried a combat patrol from the AFP's (Armed Forces of the Philippines) 69IB (Infantry Battalion). As the AFP detachment entered Sitio Guinobatan in Purok #7 the NPA targetted it with sniper fire. The AFP denied that any casualties had been incurred but after the NPA released claims that it had managed to kill one soldier the AFP sheepishly admitted that, yes, it had in fact suffered a single casualty but that it was a very minor wound when a single round grazed an extremity...Suuuuuure, don't worry, I won't tell anyone.
Speaking of Barangay Paradise Embac, the outlying settlement recently became the focus of an interesting debate in the Davao City Municipal Council when Councilors Leah Librado Yap and Jimmy Dureza co-authored a Resolution seeking to oust a garrison of the 69IB from a post located nearly 300 meters away from the Paradise Embac Annex Primary Elementary School. The NPA and its puppets, including Councilor Yap who is herself a member of Bayan, a legal above board political party doing the bidding of the NPA and its political arm, the CPP or Communist Party of the Philippines, is of course opposed to any AFP control within the long established, albeit technically unofficial, NPA Territory in that district, Paquibato, along with two adjoining districts. The garrison has been on site since 2002 and yet this past Spring, 2011, the NPA and its coterie of multi-sectoral front organisations got a gigantic bee in their bonnet about its existence, as if they had gone to bed the night before only to discover an AFP post smack dab in the middle of "their" territory.
According to the Resolution, which passed its first of three Readings on August 16th, it hopes to take aim at the emplacement and its checkpoint on the road in front of the school because it is placing both students and their teachers in grave danger. Vice Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte has interestingly defended the emplacement saying that his friends, the NPA, do not attack schools NOR children and so the garrison endangers nobody. I suppose Big Daddy Duterte failed in Logic 101 on his way into Law School because those rationalisations mean absolutely nothing. By placing armed men in proximity to small children you are automatically placing the children in danger. How much more so when there are two competing armed groups in that area? Even more interestingly, his daughter, the MAYOR, Sarah "Inday" Duterte Carpio has ALSO come out in support of the military post. Though Vice Mayor Duterte has long enabled the NPA to play house in three of his city's districts Mayor Carpio had gone much further and actually tried to have the military, aside from the anti-terrorism Task Force Davao, pulled out of the city. This nearly 360 degree turn is quite marked and all the more so when one realises that she had had to sign off on the military operation that captured the NPA's main camp in the Davao Region, but alas THAT sordid tale must be relegated to a subsequent entry.
At about the same time as the NPA began sniping in Davao City another NPA element in the municipality of Malita in that same province as Davao City, Davao del Sur, another of the AFP's "security patrols" stumbled upon 20 NPA guerillas in that town's Barangay Datu Danwata's Sitio Tambolang. The 30 minute firefight that ensued led to the AFP capturing one M1 rifle and 4 IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices (as in "bombs"). Interestingly the military is claiming that two of the devices aren't IEDs at all but rather Claymore Mines. Claymores, or M18s in American speak, are still controlled detonation devices as opposed to pressure plate mines that detonate when something steps on, or rolls over the device. This distinction is extremely important because the AFP engages in ignorant propaganda attacks against the NPA in which it claims that the Maoist guerillas are breaking International Law by utilising landmines.
First, even if the NPA engaged in non-controlled detonation devices, it still would not be contravening any part of LOAC, or the Laws of Armed Conflict, the genre within International Law that applies to warfare. There are widely adhered to treaties, Ottawa for example, in which nations that have ratified the treaty are then bound by International Law not to use such devices. I definitely view such treaties as positive to the nth degree but with controlled detonation there is no discernible chance of "accidentally" killing a group of children as they walk to school or even a peasant family's caraboa (Philippine water buffalo) because in a controlled detonation a person detonates the device from a close distance almost always within the detonation's line of sight. Ergo, even if the NPA had some acquired Claymores, and I highly doubt it since they haven't externally sourced weaponry since the mid-1970s (and never, ever in Mindanao), they wouldn't be illegal. The use of the word "landmine" in and of itself lends definite connotations to laymen. They naturally envision pressure detonated devices. This is why the AFP spin meisters cling to that ignorant phrasing. It is a shame because just in its day to day actions the NPA is guilty enough of many things. Yet, when you disseminate FALSE PROPAGANDA and people see through it you then lose all credibility.
The AFP has entered the age of Political Correctness where combat patrols have become "security patrols in support of PDTs." PDTs, or Peace and Development Teams, are the cornerstone of the AFP's new gameplan, OPlan Bayanihan, or Operational Plan Bayanihan (Operational Plan Helping Hand), which turned the traditional AFP ethos on its head. Whereas in the past, under the preceding OPlan Bantay Laya II (Operational Plan Guarding the Nation II) and all preceding OPlans, the COIN, or Counterinsurgency strategy has always been an 80:20 combination of Tactical Engagement:Hearts and Minds Engagement, Bayanihan has the 80:20 skewed into a converse dynamic as Hearts and Minds:Tactical Engagement. For the uninitiated, "Hearts and Minds" refers to actions and programmes designed to win over the "hearts and minds" of civilians in CAAs, or Conflict Affected Areas (not to be confused with the AFP COIN Tactical cornerstone, Civilian Active Auxiliaries like CAFGU, et cetera).
The idea is to defeat the NPA on its strongest facet, its Mass Base of Support. Mass Base of Support refers to peasants and others on the bottom part of the Philippine socio-economic totem pole who offer the NPA support both emotionally as well as materialy. For example, the farming family who happily hands over a half kilo of rice because he or she sympathises with the NPA's goals and outlook. Usually the NPA finds it easy to win such people over because the Maoists are the first outsiders who have ever taken even a scant interest in their needs or concerns. The state cannot be said to have "failed" such people because in almost all cases the state has never even stopped to consider such people exist EXCEPT when divvying up their lands for mineral and timber extraction. There is an old adage in COIN, "Insurgency begins where good roads end."
So, in Hearts and Minds Operations the Government wishes to win over these heretofore ignored citizens by providing marked improvements in their lives. This is done via MEDCAPs, DENCAPs, and VETCAPs, where the military, either by itself or by teaming up with charitable institutions, organisations, and individuals provides no-cost medical, dental and vetinary care for the peasants and their livestock. Schools are built or otherwise rehabilitated and/or expanded if extant. Farm to Market Roads and in the case with offshore islands, Circumfrential Roads which link communities by land where heretofore they have been 100% reliant upon seatravel are constructed and so communities do see their lives vastly improved.
Sounds fine but one needs to understand that the Government is not operating out of altruism but rather with a medium range plan that offers no real supportive infrastructure to make these improvements sustainable over the long haul. You are told that the military's engineering battalions have built a new Farm to Market Road but a few locals may see it very differently. A tribal leader may see that his tribe is now threatened by the consumerist materiel-centred culture that has defined much of the modern Philippines. Villagers may see it as the Access Road it so often is, helping to spped up the Development Aggression that has destroyed so much of Mindanao's once pristine environment.
In the autumnn of 2010 the AFP launched its first PDT. With three weeks of training nine man teams are deployed into targetted communities. They usually garrison themselves in schools, houses of worship or even private homes. They blanket a barangay and engage in a very intrusive surveying process in what amounts to a naked grab for intelligence though the military, lying through its teeth swears it is to zero in on a given community's needs. Often the questioning even focuses on the average amount of food consumed by a given family in any random month so that just as in Hamleting sustenance is measured so as to control diversion to the NPA.
This Summer, 2011, the AFP expanded its PDP programme to include the villagers themselves working side by side. On August 21st 118 civilians graduated from a three day seminar on their role(s) within the PDT programme. The ceremony in the municipality of Mati's municipal gymnasium in Davao Oriental Province featured that province's Governor del Rosario giving the keynote speech. The PDT programme, which began in Davao Region in the Autumn of 2010 has now gone nationwide after becoming the key protocol within OPlan Bayanihan.
Speaking of Barangay Paradise Embac, the outlying settlement recently became the focus of an interesting debate in the Davao City Municipal Council when Councilors Leah Librado Yap and Jimmy Dureza co-authored a Resolution seeking to oust a garrison of the 69IB from a post located nearly 300 meters away from the Paradise Embac Annex Primary Elementary School. The NPA and its puppets, including Councilor Yap who is herself a member of Bayan, a legal above board political party doing the bidding of the NPA and its political arm, the CPP or Communist Party of the Philippines, is of course opposed to any AFP control within the long established, albeit technically unofficial, NPA Territory in that district, Paquibato, along with two adjoining districts. The garrison has been on site since 2002 and yet this past Spring, 2011, the NPA and its coterie of multi-sectoral front organisations got a gigantic bee in their bonnet about its existence, as if they had gone to bed the night before only to discover an AFP post smack dab in the middle of "their" territory.
According to the Resolution, which passed its first of three Readings on August 16th, it hopes to take aim at the emplacement and its checkpoint on the road in front of the school because it is placing both students and their teachers in grave danger. Vice Mayor Rodrigo "Roddy" Duterte has interestingly defended the emplacement saying that his friends, the NPA, do not attack schools NOR children and so the garrison endangers nobody. I suppose Big Daddy Duterte failed in Logic 101 on his way into Law School because those rationalisations mean absolutely nothing. By placing armed men in proximity to small children you are automatically placing the children in danger. How much more so when there are two competing armed groups in that area? Even more interestingly, his daughter, the MAYOR, Sarah "Inday" Duterte Carpio has ALSO come out in support of the military post. Though Vice Mayor Duterte has long enabled the NPA to play house in three of his city's districts Mayor Carpio had gone much further and actually tried to have the military, aside from the anti-terrorism Task Force Davao, pulled out of the city. This nearly 360 degree turn is quite marked and all the more so when one realises that she had had to sign off on the military operation that captured the NPA's main camp in the Davao Region, but alas THAT sordid tale must be relegated to a subsequent entry.
At about the same time as the NPA began sniping in Davao City another NPA element in the municipality of Malita in that same province as Davao City, Davao del Sur, another of the AFP's "security patrols" stumbled upon 20 NPA guerillas in that town's Barangay Datu Danwata's Sitio Tambolang. The 30 minute firefight that ensued led to the AFP capturing one M1 rifle and 4 IEDs, or Improvised Explosive Devices (as in "bombs"). Interestingly the military is claiming that two of the devices aren't IEDs at all but rather Claymore Mines. Claymores, or M18s in American speak, are still controlled detonation devices as opposed to pressure plate mines that detonate when something steps on, or rolls over the device. This distinction is extremely important because the AFP engages in ignorant propaganda attacks against the NPA in which it claims that the Maoist guerillas are breaking International Law by utilising landmines.
First, even if the NPA engaged in non-controlled detonation devices, it still would not be contravening any part of LOAC, or the Laws of Armed Conflict, the genre within International Law that applies to warfare. There are widely adhered to treaties, Ottawa for example, in which nations that have ratified the treaty are then bound by International Law not to use such devices. I definitely view such treaties as positive to the nth degree but with controlled detonation there is no discernible chance of "accidentally" killing a group of children as they walk to school or even a peasant family's caraboa (Philippine water buffalo) because in a controlled detonation a person detonates the device from a close distance almost always within the detonation's line of sight. Ergo, even if the NPA had some acquired Claymores, and I highly doubt it since they haven't externally sourced weaponry since the mid-1970s (and never, ever in Mindanao), they wouldn't be illegal. The use of the word "landmine" in and of itself lends definite connotations to laymen. They naturally envision pressure detonated devices. This is why the AFP spin meisters cling to that ignorant phrasing. It is a shame because just in its day to day actions the NPA is guilty enough of many things. Yet, when you disseminate FALSE PROPAGANDA and people see through it you then lose all credibility.
The AFP has entered the age of Political Correctness where combat patrols have become "security patrols in support of PDTs." PDTs, or Peace and Development Teams, are the cornerstone of the AFP's new gameplan, OPlan Bayanihan, or Operational Plan Bayanihan (Operational Plan Helping Hand), which turned the traditional AFP ethos on its head. Whereas in the past, under the preceding OPlan Bantay Laya II (Operational Plan Guarding the Nation II) and all preceding OPlans, the COIN, or Counterinsurgency strategy has always been an 80:20 combination of Tactical Engagement:Hearts and Minds Engagement, Bayanihan has the 80:20 skewed into a converse dynamic as Hearts and Minds:Tactical Engagement. For the uninitiated, "Hearts and Minds" refers to actions and programmes designed to win over the "hearts and minds" of civilians in CAAs, or Conflict Affected Areas (not to be confused with the AFP COIN Tactical cornerstone, Civilian Active Auxiliaries like CAFGU, et cetera).
The idea is to defeat the NPA on its strongest facet, its Mass Base of Support. Mass Base of Support refers to peasants and others on the bottom part of the Philippine socio-economic totem pole who offer the NPA support both emotionally as well as materialy. For example, the farming family who happily hands over a half kilo of rice because he or she sympathises with the NPA's goals and outlook. Usually the NPA finds it easy to win such people over because the Maoists are the first outsiders who have ever taken even a scant interest in their needs or concerns. The state cannot be said to have "failed" such people because in almost all cases the state has never even stopped to consider such people exist EXCEPT when divvying up their lands for mineral and timber extraction. There is an old adage in COIN, "Insurgency begins where good roads end."
So, in Hearts and Minds Operations the Government wishes to win over these heretofore ignored citizens by providing marked improvements in their lives. This is done via MEDCAPs, DENCAPs, and VETCAPs, where the military, either by itself or by teaming up with charitable institutions, organisations, and individuals provides no-cost medical, dental and vetinary care for the peasants and their livestock. Schools are built or otherwise rehabilitated and/or expanded if extant. Farm to Market Roads and in the case with offshore islands, Circumfrential Roads which link communities by land where heretofore they have been 100% reliant upon seatravel are constructed and so communities do see their lives vastly improved.
Sounds fine but one needs to understand that the Government is not operating out of altruism but rather with a medium range plan that offers no real supportive infrastructure to make these improvements sustainable over the long haul. You are told that the military's engineering battalions have built a new Farm to Market Road but a few locals may see it very differently. A tribal leader may see that his tribe is now threatened by the consumerist materiel-centred culture that has defined much of the modern Philippines. Villagers may see it as the Access Road it so often is, helping to spped up the Development Aggression that has destroyed so much of Mindanao's once pristine environment.
In the autumnn of 2010 the AFP launched its first PDT. With three weeks of training nine man teams are deployed into targetted communities. They usually garrison themselves in schools, houses of worship or even private homes. They blanket a barangay and engage in a very intrusive surveying process in what amounts to a naked grab for intelligence though the military, lying through its teeth swears it is to zero in on a given community's needs. Often the questioning even focuses on the average amount of food consumed by a given family in any random month so that just as in Hamleting sustenance is measured so as to control diversion to the NPA.
This Summer, 2011, the AFP expanded its PDP programme to include the villagers themselves working side by side. On August 21st 118 civilians graduated from a three day seminar on their role(s) within the PDT programme. The ceremony in the municipality of Mati's municipal gymnasium in Davao Oriental Province featured that province's Governor del Rosario giving the keynote speech. The PDT programme, which began in Davao Region in the Autumn of 2010 has now gone nationwide after becoming the key protocol within OPlan Bayanihan.
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