Hacienda Luisita
dispersal:
Shots Were Fired During Lull in Scuffle
From the testimony of a worker at the
front lines of the Hacienda Luisita picket and the unedited version of a
footage taken by an independent media practitioner, police started firing
at the strikers during a lull in the fighting. The scenes from the
unedited footage, shown Dec. 1 at a hearing of the Senate Committees on
Labor and National Security, appears to shoot down police and military
claims that it was the strikers who started the violence.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
(From extreme left) Victor Niño Tagaro of
Tudla Multi-Media Network, Emil Paragas of Karapatan-Tarlac and Girlie
Padilla of the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace with Labor
Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas (extreme right) and other government
officials at the House hearing Nov. 30
Photo by Alexander Martin Remollino
The gunfire that
killed at least seven strikers at Hacienda Luisita last Nov. 16 actually
happened during a lull in the fighting between the picketers and the crowd
dispersal unit.
Rene Tua, one of the
striking Hacienda Luisita workers, said this at the Nov. 30 hearing of the
House of Representatives on the incident. “It was the police and military
forces deployed to quell the strike who started the violence,” he also
said.
Police and military
officials have been claiming that the picketers fired the first shot, and
the members of the security force only used their guns in self-defense.
Unedited footage
Tua’s testimony was
confirmed by the unedited version of the footage of the incident taken by
Victor Niño Tagaro of the Tudla Multi-Media Network. Mainstream broadcast
companies have been using an edited version of the footage in their
reportage of the incident.
The unedited version
of the footage was shown at the Senate hearing on the dispersal last Dec.
1.
At the House hearing,
Tagaro had testified that he had been commissioned by the Ecumenical
Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER) to do a video
documentary on workers’ struggles, and he was covering the Hacienda
Luisita strike as part of his work on the documentary. He happened to be
at Luisita when the violent dispersal occurred, he said, and decided to go
on taking footages.
Tagaro had taken the
footage from the vantage point of the strikers.
The footage showed
what had transpired from as early as 45 minutes before the firing began.
It showed that the strikers, although restless, were not attacking the
crowd dispersal unit.
Some 1,000 soldiers
and local police had gone into the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT) at 3
p.m. that day with two V150s and two fire trucks. Because CAT Gate 1 was
padlocked from the inside, as Task Force Luisita chief Sr. Supt. Angel
Sunglao had testified in previous Senate and House of Representatives
hearings, the V150s and the fire trucks found their way inside the CAT
through another entrance.
The strikers were
sprayed with water from the fire trucks, but they did not budge. They next
found tear gas canisters being lobbed at them, but they found ways to
extinguish the gas. They meanwhile started throwing stones at the soldiers
and police to defend themselves.
From the inside, a
V150 was rammed into CAT (Central Azucarera de Tarlac) Gate 1. The
strikers threw stones at the vehicle – in self-defense still, Tua had
explained in previous hearings, thinking that they were going to be run
over – an explanation with which many congressmen investigating the
incident have agreed. More water was sprayed at them and more tear gas
canisters were thrown, but the workers continued fighting back.
After a few minutes,
the V150 retreated. The crowd dispersal unit stopped spraying water and
throwing tear gas. At this point, the front-liners of the picket were
caught on video signaling to fellow picketers behind them to stop throwing
stones.
It was at this point
that a volley of shots was heard, and the strikers were caught on video
scampering for safety.
Firing
Sunglao had claimed
in the Dec. 1 Senate hearing that the security force positioned behind the
crowd dispersal unit and providing back-up had fired at workers who forced
their way inside CAT through Gate 1.
Sen. Sergio Osmeña
III later asked him if the security force had moved to the front of the
six-row crowd dispersal unit before firing at the intruders, to which he
replied in the negative.
“How could they have
fired at intruders from behind the crowd dispersal unit without killing
their fellow policemen first?” a smirking Osmeña asked.
Meanwhile Sens. Juan
Ponce Enrile, Rodolfo Biazon, and Alfredo Lim repeatedly pressed Sunglao
with questions as to who ordered the firing. “Soldiers and policemen don’t
act without orders,” Enrile, a former defense secretary, said in a
subsequent interview with reporters.
Sunglao kept denying
that he ordered the firing and claiming that no one ordered it. He would
not point at anyone ordering the firing, even as Lim’s questions appeared
to have been formulated in favor of the crowd dispersal unit and the
security force. Bulatlat
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