Missing activists' family maintain: Military is the culprit
Rose Arado, wife of missing activist Nilo
Arado, cries during a press conference
last week. Photo by A. Chris Fernandez
The families of two missing leaders of militant organizations and their colleagues have maintained that only military agents have the motive and the means to undertake the attack and abduction.
They yesterday visited the headquarters of the Army's 79th Infantry Battalion in Antique and the 12th Infantry Battalion in Miag-ao town in Iloilo to look for Ma. Luisa Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado.
The families of the missing activists have appealed for the safe release of their kin.
"Give us back our Nanay."
This was the appeal of Dominado's two daughters May Wan Dominado, 26, and her sister Tamara Michelle, 16. They also called for the safe release of Arado who was abducted along with their mother.
They said they are aware that hundreds of extra-judicial killings have happened in the country especially directed against party-list groups representing marginalized sectors but were still pained to consider that their mother could be one of the victims.
"We have long sympathized with the pain of the victims of such injustice and their families, but it is incomparable to personally experience the anguish of not knowing whether your loved one is still alive, being subjected to torture or killed," the sisters said in a statement issued in behalf of their family.
Tomas Legislador Dominado Jr., Ma. Luisa's husband, in an e-mailed statement was saddened by how the military treated the case of his wife and two other activists. He lamented that the military points their accusing fingers to the victims themselves branding the incident as a "self ambush."
He thus accused the government as behind the recent attack on activists which include his wife. He said it is just part of the repression being perpetuated by the administration on progressive groups.
"Allow me to cry out that I am in great pain and my family, Luisa's family, friends, and co-workers are in great anguish. Yet what strange solace we do get from realizing that such pain is but a drop in an ocean of the people's oppression, exploitation, hunger, and hopelessness," part of the statement reads,
Arado's wife Rosemarie also called on his captors to release him alive and unharmed.
"He has done nothing wrong. If you believe he has committed any offense, let us face it in the courts," said Rosemarie. The couple has a six-year old son.
Dominado, 52, is the spokesperson of the Samahan nga mga Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Para sa Amnestiya (Selda-Panay) while Arado, 38, is chairperson of the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), and the 7th nominee of the party-list group Anakpawis.
Police are eyeing the involvement of former communist rebels and the military in the shooting of a human rights workers and abduction of two leaders of militant organizations on Panay Island.
Chief Supt. Wilfredo Dulay Sr., Western Visayas police director said, there is a "big possibility" that members of the breakaway Revolutionary Proletarian Army-Alex Boncayao Brigade (RPA-ABB) could be responsible for the shooting and wounding of Jose Ely Garachico and the abduction of Dominado and Arado.
Dulay said the attack could be in reprisal for last February's killing of RPA-ABB commander Jose Cabunagan in Tigbauan town, Iloilo. The killing was owned up by the New People's Army.
The RPA-ABB broke ties with the NPA in the early 1990s over ideological and political differences. It signed a peace pact with the government in December 2000.
Dulay said this theory has been boosted by the recovery of the victims' badly burned vehicle in a sugarcane field in Janiuay town where the RPA-ABB operates.
Demetrio Capilastique, RPA-ABB in Panay, denied responsibility in the incident, saying the victims were non-combatants.
Dulay said they could not also discount the possibility that members of the military could also be involved especially after suffering casualties in a recent clash in Lambunao town, Iloilo.
But this was denied by the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.
"The Army has nothing to do with it. In fact, we have dispatched our operatives to track down the suspects in coordination with the Philippine National Police," said 3ID spokesperson Lt. Col. David Tan.
Investigators have still no clues on the whereabouts of Dominado and Arado and the identities of their assailants.
Dulay said they are still getting descriptions from witness who can help come up with cartographic sketches of the assailants because Garachico could not remember the assailants' descriptions.
The assailants shot and seriously wounded Garachico in the chest after blocking the victims' vehicle in Oton town Thursday night. They forced Dominado and Arado into vehicles and left Garachico at the site of the incident.