Protesting against EJKs nothing new

It was a brutal, daylight murder that drew a mourning multitude to the funeral march. This Tuesday, Oct. 25, is the fourth anniversary of that mammoth gathering of the 15,000 people that brought the remains of the slain Italian missionary Fr. Fausto Tentorio to his grave in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato.

The multitude, made up of relatives and friends of the slain priest, lumad, farmers, human rights advocates, church workers and youth, had joined in one single cry: justice for the murdered priest and retribution for those responsible for his death—allegedly the military and then President Benigno Aquino III.

Forty buses of mourners from Davao City stopped at the town of Makilala where the headquarters of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion is located, to make known their outrage over the murder of Father Tentorio, right at the doorstep, so to speak, of the “home” of the perceived culprits. The mourners then marched all the way to the Mary Mediatrix Cathedral in Kidapawan where the funeral Mass was to begin.

Prominent human rights advocates from Manila attended, led by Satur Ocampo and Teddy Casiño. Bishops and priests from all over Mindanao were also there. From Italy came members of the martyr’s family. A number of Manobo datu also came, in formal tribal finery. It was a fitting tribute to a life that was lived for others.

Father Tentorio was killed in the early morning of Oct. 17, 2012, by a lone gunman who shot him eight times. The priest was about to get into his vehicle, which was parked outside the Mother of Perpetual Help parish compound in Arakan, North Cotabato. The Manobo of Arakan had been opposing the mining activities that had harmed their habitat and environment. The parish priest had stood behind his people until that brutal end as a beloved servant of their cause.

Later, a member of the Bagani Special Force, a paramilitary group operating in the hinterlands of Arakan Valley, confessed that it was his group that was behind the murder. The military had accused Father Tentorio of being a coddler of the New People’s Army. But it was also on record that he had spoken out against crimes committed by the NPA, who he had assumed had taken advantage of the problems of indigenous peoples to wage its ideological struggle against the military and the government.

Why were the military and President Aquino blamed for Father Tentorio’s murder? The priest’s assassination was seen as part of the implementation of Oplan Bayanihan, the military’s counterinsurgency strategy during the Aquino administration. The oplan was continually adding to extrajudicial killings (EJKs) statistics by the day: Fausto Tentorio was the 54th victim of the allegedly state-sponsored extrajudicial killings.

Father Tentorio spent 32 years in the Philippines as a missionary. That stint came to an end all of sudden when he was murdered by a militia said to be backed up no less by a state which has all the powers to cover up its deadly tracks. It is only a state that is capable of misusing its powers, turning them against its own people’s right to life under a culture of impunity. Under a culture of impunity, all that we mundane mortals can do is to count the numbers that keep rising each day.

Many of the EJK victims do not have the stature of Father Tentorio. Most have less in life, like the people he served. If 54 EJK victims is a small number, shall we not do the same if the number reaches 3,000? It is a question to ask for every human being felled by extrajudicial killing.

It is a false assumption to say there was no public uproar against EJKs during the Aquino regime.

It is premised that public condemnation against EJKs during the previous dispensation was nil (wrongly assuming that those who kept quiet were Aquino diehards). And so the conclusion is made that those who condemn the recent EJKs have no right to speak out now for their silence in the past. Between the premise and the conclusion is a disconnect that renders the argument invalid.

Where are we getting such fallacies? If it is the argumentum quod non sequitur of the century, this must be a reflection of who we have become as a people in the last four months.