Remembering the Maguindanao massacre

Today we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre, also called the Ampatuan massacre, from the name of the town where the mass graves of 58 victims were found.

I only learned of the massacre a day after it happened. I was at the Sibulan Port Terminal lounge in Negros Oriental waiting for my boat ride back to Cebu when I saw on TV the grim news of the massacre that happened on November 23, 2009.

The timing was ironic to me, coming from being holed up in a resort in Dumaguete City for a one-week intensive training on human rights sponsored by Equitas and the Embassy of Canada. I was not yet a lawyer then, and was just over a month trying to forget the (traumatic) Bar exams that I took in September which extended to the first week of October because of Typhoon Ondoy.

Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA” was still playing on my headphone at the terminal lounge when suddenly my attention was snatched by the television screen. On the screen were several bodies being recovered by authorities.

Of the 58 who died in the massacre, 34 were journalists, 11 were members of the Mangudadatu family and their associates, and six were civilians who just happened to pass by the area when the targeted convoy was stopped.

Two questions immediately came to my mind: Who were the people behind such gruesome killings against so many innocent people? How did this come to happen?

In answer to the first question, Andal Ampatuan Sr. and his son Andal Ampatuan Jr. were named as the principal suspects behind the killings. The elder Ampatuan died in 2015 while in detention after suffering a stroke and other illnesses. Twenty-seven others, some of whom were policemen, were likewise charged with murder.

The case for multiple murder, which happened during the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration, has dragged on for a decade already and it was even considered a blot in the otherwise popular regime of Arroyo’s successor, President Noynoy Aquino, who vowed to work for a conviction before the end of his term. In a report by Rappler, the Aquino administration in 2014 scored a -26% net satisfaction ratings in resolving the massacre despite a +51% overall satisfaction ratings. Finally, a verdict is expected next month and we all pray that justice will prevail.

As regards my second question: How did this come to happen? Things, especially tragic ones, just don’t happen in isolation. In the case of Mindanao, we all know that the government does not have a monopoly of armed force in many parts of the island. There are a number of non-state armed forces that co-exist with the state armed forces, including armed insurgent groups and private armies of local politicians.

At many points in our history, government was said to have been left with little choice but to mobilize the support of private armies of local warlords or train its own paramilitary groups in order to fight insurgencies – in the case of Mindanao, the Moro insurgency and the communist insurgency. Such insurgencies, meanwhile, linger and at some points in history even thrive because of factors that feed on each other to keep a territory underdeveloped – systemic corruption, political patronage, and backward economics.

Underdeveloped areas where the population is under the grip of a well-armed political clan were also used by national politicians to secure solid votes during elections.

As a quid pro quo to all these, local warlords get arms and supplies from the police and armed forces. In short, wrote Political Science professor Amado Mendoza Jr. of UP, private armies like that of the Ampatuans were financed and equipped by taxpayers’ money. Such raw play of power and political dynamics breed arrogance and hubris in unsophisticated local leaders.

Government may argue that insurgencies left them with little choice but to enlist the support of local warlords.  What we as a people, however, fail to understand is that acts of violence, whether directed against individuals, many people or a group of people, usually stem from a crisis of legitimacy (or hegemony).

Let me put it this way, simply in a family setting. A philandering father will end up breaking his family apart. His sons and daughters will question the legitimacy of his position and they too will likely have their own indiscretions. Now, replace “father” with government, “philandering” with plundering, and “family” with nation.