Impunity in Arakan

The murder of  Italian missionary Fausto Tentorio is yet another terrible blot on the reputation of the Philippines in the global community, and yet another indication (as though more were needed) that in these parts, the culture of impunity long noted by Amnesty International and even the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings is ever robust. The circumstances are chillingly familiar because we have seen similar scenarios before: Target getting into his vehicle to head to a meeting (preoccupied, with his guard down), assassin moving in with a pistol, target falling in a (quiet) hail of bullets, assassin walking to a waiting motorcycle and speeding away from the scene of the crime. It shows how, in this day and age marked by great strides in science and technology, savagery prevails, certain groups continue to be impervious to the rule of law, and murder remains their modus of choice.

Tentorio, 59, came to the Philippines in 1978 and thereafter worked as a missionary in Mindanao. By accounts (and a photograph of women weeping as they viewed his remains in a temporary coffin), he was well-loved by the people he served in Arakan, North Cotabato. One described him as “a true servant who represents the best of humanity.” A spokesperson of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), of which he was a member, said he was “very pastorally active among the poor” and spent his life empowering and giving dignity to indigenous and other disadvantaged peoples.

Observers attentive to the lay of the land, as it were, would spot the key words—“a true servant,” “active among the poor,” empowerment of the marginalized—and recognize the cues. In this neck of the woods, men and women who take it upon themselves to fill the yawning gaps created by the government’s blatant absence, and who, for example, make it their life work to lift the downtrodden from the swamp of poverty and ignorance, continue to be viewed as “communist” and therefore anathema. And authorities, including their militias, continue to implement efforts to root out this “evil.”

In his heyday, Jovito Palparan, the retired major general who last commanded the Army’s 7th Infantry Division based in Central Luzon, was tagged “butcher” by militant groups who held him responsible for the murder and disappearance of activists in areas where he was stationed. Then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo famously lauded him for his achievements; he accepted the praise with an “aw, shucks” stance.

Has the situation become such that Tentorio, a man of God dedicated to serving the least of His brethren, was seen as “communist,” and, following this perverted logic, was his murder deemed more value than violation? (Two other PIME members serving in the wilds of Mindanao were similarly felled. Militiaman Norberto Manero did time for more than 20 years for the unspeakable murder and mutilation of Fr. Tulio Favali and has since been released. But Fr. Salvatore Carzedda’s killer and the abductors of other foreign missionaries have yet to be named and brought to justice. We are not even beginning to mention the killing of environmentalist Gerry Ortega and others like him, not priests or nuns, but as devoted to raising public awareness and breaking the silence of the oppressed.)

That there is now talk implicating the military in the murder of Tentorio is hardly surprising given the time lag between its current official pronouncements and the actual behavior of its forces in the field, particularly in the hinterlands where murders most foul occur as much in the piercing light of day as in the dead of night. Indeed, as early as 2003 the priest was pulled from the brink of death by women who hid him and his companions from members of the Baganis paramilitary unit who had come looking for him. The Baganis claimed to belong to the military’s 73rd Infantry Battalion, Tentorio wrote in his own account of the experience. They said he was a “supporter” of the communist New People’s Army.

In subsequent years, according to church workers, military vehicles and soldiers made their presence felt in various barangays of Arakan, and even the church compound.

If President Aquino is determined to get Tentorio’s killers, he will find the pattern too clear to ignore.