This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 8, April 3-9, 2005
A Narrow
Escape from a Military Plot
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 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 © 2004 Bulatlat
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Willy Marbella’s Odyssey from Bicol to Metro Manila
Bulatlat