A Narrow Escape from a
Military Plot
Willy Marbella’s Odyssey from Bicol to Metro Manila
In the course of his
work as an activist leader, Willy Marbella found himself forced to leave
his native province in order to elude death threats coming from the
powers-that-be. Even so, he continues his work in Metro Manila; he
recently found himself in a hunger strike to protest the recent spate of
killings of activist leaders.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
The left leg of Willy
Marbella, national spokesperson of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP
or Philippine Peasant Movement), limps. This is because in 1965, when he
was not yet in first grade, he suffered a bad fall from a carabao (water
buffalo).
But this physical
handicap did not prevent the military in Bicol (southernmost Luzon),
whence he came, from branding him a “kumander” of the guerrilla New
People’s Army (NPA).
Before he began his
stint in December last year as KMP national spokesperson, he was working
full-time as the chairperson of the multi-sectoral cause-oriented group
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance) in the Bicol
region.
His work as activist
leader in Bicol had everything to do with his moving to Metro Manila.
Besides, it added a highly personal streak to his joining the hunger
strike led by Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) Reps. Rafael Mariano and Crispin
Beltran from March 30 to April 1, in protest of the recent spate of
killings and abductions of known progressive personalities.
The hunger strike was
staged to demand action from the Macapagal-Arroyo administration to stop
the spate of activists’ killings.
Thirty-two activist
leaders have been killed from January to March 15, based on data from
Karapatan (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights). These include
Tarlac City Councilor Abelardo Ladera, Aglipayan priest William Tadena,
and human rights lawyer Felidito Dacut. Meanwhile, seven other activists
have disappeared during the same period.
Human rights lawyer
Charlie Juloya survived an assassin’s bullets in La Union while another,
UN Judge ad litem Romeo T. Capulong, was the target of a foiled
assassination attempt in his hometown in Nueva Ecija.
In many of these
killings, abductions, and assassination attempts, military and
paramilitary forces have been identified by human rights groups, witnesses
and survivors of the victims as the prime suspects.
Marbella feels he
could have himself ended up in the list of casualties had things turned
differently. “The enemy knows how deeply committed I am to the cause of
the peasantry and the people as a whole,” he said.
Not
new
He is not new to what
he describes as the government and the military’s game of demonization,
however.
Starting out in 1981
as a member of the Bicol Coconut Planters Association, which fought
against the imposition of the coconut levy, Marbella was elected to the
KMP National Council in 1987.
As early as the
1980s, Marbella was being linked to the Sparrow Unit, an NPA urban unit
that operated during the period. During this time, he would find himself
being “invited” to a military camp for questioning.
In 1999, Marbella was
elected chairman of Bayan-Bicol.
Two years later, he
would start seeing on the walls of Bicol
University and other establishments
graffiti calling him Kumander (Commander) Willy and warning him to “change
his ways.” The graffiti, he said, always carried the signature of the
Kilusan Kontra-Komunista (Anti-Communist Movement), a group widely
believed to be associated with the military.
In the next two
years, Marbella and other activists would always find posters on the walls
of the Bayan-Bicol office calling him a “communist and terrorist.” The
posters also carried the signature of the Kilusan Kontra-Komunista.
They were also able
to monitor, he said, the distribution of flyers calling the Bicol activist
groups “front organizations” of the clandestine National Democratic Front
(NDF). He also learned that the Department of Social Welfare and
Development (DSWD) used its Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan (Link Arms
Against Poverty)-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services
or Kalahi-CIDSS program to discredit Bayan-Bicol and the organizations
under its umbrella.
“In Bicol as in other
parts of the country, mass leaders are demonized in preparation for their
liquidation,” Marbella said. “The public mind is conditioned with pictures
of the mass leaders as ‘communists’ as a way of making them believe that
it would do good if these people should be eliminated.”
Late last year,
things would take a turn for the worse.
Militarization
On Oct. 28, he said,
elements of the Philippine Army’s 9th Infantry Division (9th ID, PA)
entered the village where he lives. On the night of Nov. 8, he said, they
surrounded his house, and he heard some of them talking with neighbors,
pretending to be compadres looking for him. Fortunately, he said,
his neighbors had the presence of mind to shield him by saying they didn’t
know where he was at that hour. The soldiers stayed around and waited for
him to arrive.
That same night, the
first chance he got, he slipped away from his house.
Two days later, Joel
Baclao of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), who was
also a regional coordinator of the Promotion of Church People’s Response (PCPR)
and who always accompanied Marbella on his trips, was killed. On Nov. 11,
Marbella received three text messages saying he was next.
On Nov. 12, a fellow
activist would reveal in a Bayan-Bicol meeting that the day before he had
happened to be in a church where a military official’s remains were lying
in state, and he had overheard soldiers saying that Marbella was the next
target.
Marbella left Bicol
for Metro Manila on Dec. 9, and the next day he spoke at the Human Rights
Day rally as KMP national spokesperson.
There are still
soldiers stationed near his house, and he has been receiving reports that
his relatives are being harassed, he said.
He says that “the
enemy” gained a slight victory by driving him away from Bicol, where he
was an activist leader since the 1980s. “But this does not mean the defeat
of the mass movement there,” he hastens to add.
“I was pushed into a
situation where I had to protect myself to deprive those with evil
intentions of a chance to act treacherously against me,” he said.
But does he find
Metro Manila a safer place for activist leaders in his condition? “Being
here is not really a guarantee that those in my condition would be safe,”
he said.
“I would rather think
of being here as an expression of determination to continue with my work
in the service of the people,” he added. Bulatlat
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