Luisita death toll: 10
News TARLAC CITY — The death toll in Tuesday’s bloodbath in the Hacienda Luisita has already been pegged at 10, which included a three-month old infant, even as there is now confusion on who fired shots at the more than 6,000 protesters during the dispersal operation by combined policemen and soldiers.

This, as it was learned that Director General Edgardo Aglipay, national police chief, has already ordered the relief from their posts of Chief Superintendent Quirino dela Torre and Senior Superintendent Angelo Sunglao, respective chiefs of police for the Central Luzon region and the province of Tarlac.

Dela Torre was in charge of the about a thousand police anti-riot contingent, which included lawmen from Olongapo City, and the provinces of Pampanga and Bataan.

Militant congressmen belonging to the radical party-list groups, Bayan Muna and Anakpawis, further called for the sacking of Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas for having ordered the dispersal that resulted to the kind of violence last seen in the province during the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship regime.

House Deputy Speaker, Tarlac second district Rep. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, further received sharp criticisms from human rights activists for supposedly “justifying” the violent dispersal over national television Tuesday night by claiming that three policemen were hurt during the melee.

FATALITIES

Of those killed due to gunshot wounds, six were already positively identified: Adriano Caballero, Jessie Valdez and Juancho Sanchez, all of Barangay Balete, this city; Jesus Lasa, of Barangay Parang in Concepcion town; John David, of Barangay Cutcut 2nd, also in this city; and Jaime Pastidio, of Barangay Motrico in La Paz town.

In a statement, Rene Galang, president of the United Luisita Workers’ Union (ULWU), said that the three-month old infant died of asphyxiation when a teargas fired by the anti-riot police hit their shanty, which was about a kilometer away from the main battleground of the lawmen and rallyists at the Gate 1 of the sugar estate’s refinery.

The baby’s father, whose identity could not yet be determined but was described to be one from the Visayas working as a “sacada” in Hacienda Luisita, also died when he was allegedly shot at several times.

GUNSHOTS

It is not yet clear from where the gunshots came from, as both the police and the Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) insisted that elements of the anti-riot force were only armed with teargas, truncheons and shields, although they were reinforced with water cannons on four fire trucks, a bulldozer and two V-150 armored personnel carrier (APC).

In an account by Galang of the incident, it was around 3 p.m. when the protesters were first pounded by the anti-riot force with teargas canisters and water cannons, while one of the APCs several times rammed the barricaded Gate 1 of the refinery.

The rallyists fought back with pillbox and Molotov cocktail bombs, as well as slingshots and rocks. Galang said that in the about 40-minute clash, the protesters were able to push back the anti-riot force, “just like the Parisian workers capturing the Bastille.”

But a few moments later, gunshots were heard.

“The shooting erupted from everywhere,” said Galang, as a number of protesters immediately fell on the ground.

Eyewitnesses have it that the gunfire bursts lasted for nearly 10 minutes, and that intermittent gunshots were still heard despite the rallyists having already retreated, dragging with them the dead and wounded.

SNIPERS?

Galang said that they saw snipers “positioned” in the buildings inside the sugar estate’s factory compound and nearby sugarcane fields.

In a telephone interview, Nolcom spokesman, Lt. Col. Preme Monta, short of confirmed the presence of snipers then, but denied that they were among the government contingent.

Monta said that he was at the dispersal at the time, positioned at the rear of the anti-riot force manning the government ambulances.

According to him, during the shooting, he saw “gunfire flashes” on top of about four trucks loaded with sugarcane sticks that were parked near the dispersal site.

When one of the APCs surged forward to where the gunshots were being fired, Monta said he saw several men scamper away, as then recovered were an M-16 assault rifle, a folding carbine and a cal. 38 revolver.

Authorities claimed that those who shot at the rallyists could be “Leftist instigators,” but protest leaders claimed that they could either be government agents or elements of Hacienda Luisita’s private security force.

It was around 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday when the police and military finally took control of the refinery, and cleared the main road in the sugar estate of any form of resistance.

GUNSHOT WOUNDS

Most of the injured rallyists admitted for treatment sustained gunshot wounds, said provincial health officer, Dr. Ricardo Ramos.

Among those hit by stray bullets were Sajid Ramos, 31, who said he was only about to fetch his mother in a nearby community when the violence erupted while passing by the picketline, and Jose Romero, village councilor of Barangay Mapalacsiao.

Nearly a hundred injured protesters were admitted for treatment at the Tarlac Provincial Hospital (TPH), the Central Luzon Doctors’ Hospital, the Ramos General Hospital, as well as at the St. Martin de Porres Hospital inside Hacienda Luisita and the Nolcom Hospital inside Camp Gen. Servillano Aquino in Barangay San Miguel, this city.

Police said that exactly 111 rallyists were rounded up and brought to the police provincial office in Camp Gen. Francisco Makabulos, also this city. But Galang said that by their own accounts, 116 were arrested.

The detainees said that when they were seized, policemen and soldiers had their hands bound with ropes before they were dragged to the bus that ferried them to Camp Makabulos.

Some of the detainees were women, which included Emelita Olis, who was five months pregnant.

Gov. Jose Yap immediately ordered Olis’ transfer from detention to the TPH for medical attention, even as he ordered the staff of the government-owned hospital to immediately attend to the needs of the injured rallyists, with all of their medical expenses charged to the provincial government.

FACT-FINDING MISSION

On Wednesday morning, sectoral Reps. Satur Ocampo and Teddy Casino of Bayan Muna, and Crispin Beltran and Rafael Mariano of Anakpawis, arrived at Hacienda Luisita for a “fact-finding mission.”

The militant solons were initially barred from entering the estate’s premises at its main gate in Barangay San Miguel here. They were able to gain entry only through one of the plantation’s “backdoors” in Barangay Cutcut 2nd.

Mariano said that they have learned that more people inside Hacienda Luisita were reported missing, as armed men in fatigue uniforms reportedly subjected all the estate’s 10 villages to “zoning” in the evening of Tuesday.

But Monta said that none of the troops under Nolcom, nor those from the police, carried out such an operation.

Except for Noynoy acting as spokesman for Hacienda Luisita before national television news channels, no other formal statement was issued by the Cojuangco family.

APPEALS FOR PEACE

On Wednesday morning, Yap called for an emergency meeting with Vice Gov. Marcelino Aganon Jr. and the members of the provincial board at the capitol building here.

After the meeting, they came out with a statement, saying that, prior to the violence, they have “exhausted all efforts to have the labor dispute peacefully resolved, with admonitions to all parties involved in this issue to instead meet in the negotiating table rather than turning the protesters’ picketline into a battleground.”

“What has transpired in that fateful afternoon of November 16, 2004 inside the Hacienda Luisita was what the Provincial Government was trying to avert in the first place, with repeated appeals that there could have had been still a non-violent way out of the gridlock that has affected the families of the workers and farmworkers inside the hacienda, the management, the sugar planters of Central and Northern Luzon, and the people of Tarlac as well,” added the province’s elected officials.

As the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has assumed jurisdiction over the Hacienda Luisita, Tarlac’s political leaders appealed that “further bloodshed should be prevented, and a just, peaceful and lasting solution to the problems inside the hacienda should now instead be immediately effected.”

Before the violence here occurred, a last-ditch attempt to peacefully resolve the labor dispute was made when Noynoy and his uncle, former Tarlac Rep. Jose “Peping” Cojuangco Jr., met with Ric Ramos, president of the Central Azucarera de Tarlac Labor Union (CATLU), and ULWU’s Galang, in “backchannel” talks in Manila.

Serving as “intermediaries” in the meeting were sectoral Rep. Satur Ocampo, of the radical party-list group, Bayan Muna, and activist Tarlac City councilor Abel Ladera.

But the effort bogged down, as both sides took “hardline” stands, with Noynoy and Peping demanding that the picketline should be first dismantled in order for the refinery to resume operations before formal negotiations are held, but the union leaders insisted otherwise.

It was last Nov. 6 when the protest actions here commenced.

CATLU was in a deadlock in its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) talks with management, as it was demanding a P100 salary increase and a P30,000 signing bonus for each of its members. The CAT maintained that it can only provide a P12 wage hike and a P12,000 bonus.

ULWU, on the other hand, was demanding for the reinstatement of 327 farmworkers laid off by the Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) last Oct. 1, even as among those dismissed were Galang, its vice president, Ildefonso Pingul, and eight other union officers.

The inclusion of the ULWU officers in the mass retrenchment came even as the union had then just started holding CBA talks with the HLI, the corporate farming firm established in the late 1980s under the stock scheme of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) where the more than 5,000 farmworkers here are also being regarded as the Cojuangcos’ “co-owners.”

Posted on Wednesday, November 17 @ 14:36:42 HKT