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Hunting season, killing fields

At the rate leaders and members of progressive and militant organizations are being felled by sinister bullets, the entire scenario smells of deliberate and systematic state executions. Because the political and economic landscape is marked by a swelling crisis that has gone out of control and a people’s resistance leavened by years of discontent, organized political action has become necessary, and death of those at the forefront, a means to silence them. How else to muzzle the insistent clamor for change but to put the nozzle of the gun to the mouthpiece?

The latest casualty in this rampage of state repression and terror is Ilocos Bayan secretary general and Bayan Muna coordinator Romeo Sanchez, a onetime fearless media person and persistent peasant organizer. He joins the list of murdered leaders of the people’s movement. Only a few days ago, mourning but defiant sugar workers in Hacienda Luisita buried Tarlac councilor and Bayan Muna member Abelardo Ladera. The list is ominously getting longer and to quote Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casino, “….there are two Bayan Muna members either killed or abducted every ten days.”

These are incidents that government agencies tasked to investigate have not pursued nor exhaustively probed. And understandably so. Previous executions of progressives have pointed to military and paramilitary groups as the culprits for obvious reasons. In the villages and rural centers, away from public attention and mainstream media coverage, AFP elements have a certain disdain for people who question government neglect and policies. These military elements conveniently lump together the local folk as NPA rebels and sympathizers and mark them as sure targets for execution. They make no distinction of people’s legitimate expressions of grievances and demands. The instruction they mechanically follow is to neutralize “enemies of the state” and uphold national interest.

The slaying of Sanchez at the Baguio City public market is a warning signal to the people in the urban centers of Northern Luzon. The killing fields are not limited to the countryside. They can nip the bud, so to speak, in the nerve centers of public opinion.

The progressive sectors, aware of continuing threats to their collective action must pursue justice for the brutal deaths of colleagues and leaders. The broad citizenry must take a stand on these wanton acts of repression against the people. Allowing the government to stay mum about this will only confirm what has been historically established: it resorts to martial law tactics to quell people’s unrest. Until Sanchez’s death remains unsolved, the Arroyo government is held responsible for this fascist act.

And though it has been said before, we shall say it again: “They have not silenced a just person just because they have silenced him or her…” #

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