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.”