Reporter Aquiles Zonio escaped the atrocity that killed 57 others, reports DAVID McNEILLin Maguindanao, the Philippines
THE TROPICAL emerald hills of southern Mindanao stretch into the horizon as Aquiles Zonio stares blankly into the only visible scar in this picturesque landscape – a freshly dug hole in one of the highest peaks.
Zonio should have been found dumped inside this hole with a bullet in the back of his head. In late November, 57 people on their way to an election office were pulled from their cars off a road near here, dragged to this isolated spot and shot and hacked to death. The killers dumped the bodies into this makeshift grave, dug three days earlier as the attack was being planned.
Zonio, a freelance reporter, escaped after being tipped off at a hotel en route that he was among the targets.
“We had breakfast together that morning,” he recalls of his last meeting with his colleagues. “We were laughing and joking. Then I hear all my friends had been killed – every single one. I still cannot believe it.” Even in the notoriously unstable and bloodstained southern Philippines, where swaggering families rule over feudal-style dynasties and politics is famously red in tooth and claw, the brazenness of the Maguindanao atrocity has stunned observers. Lawyers, election campaigners, bystanders and at least 34 journalists were among the victims. One newspaper watchdog called the event the single deadliest attack on the press ever recorded and warned of its “incalculable” impact on a general election in May. And Zonio, like most Filipinos, has no doubts about who sent the killers.
“Of course it was the Ampatuan family,” he says. “They think they are untouchable because of their power and their closeness to President Gloria [Macapagal-Arroyo].”
In a deeply flawed democracy where authority in many local areas flows out of the barrel of a gun, the Ampatuans are just one of dozens of clans that use elections to legitimise, not win, power. Led by ageing family patriarch Andal snr, the clan dominates Maguindanao, a province of 1.27 million people roughly a third the size of Leinster. For years, they have carried the region for President Arroyo, delivering blocs of votes to her in the 2004 and 2007 general elections. In return, critics say, she turned a blind eye to vast voter fraud, intimidation and almost medieval cruelty that her allies used to hold power.
“Everyone knows from oral testimony how horrific the Ampatuans are,” said a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch (HRW) in the Philippines, which is investigating the killings. Hundreds of cases of bombings, abduction, murder and torture have been recorded, but mostly ignored by the international media. With a private squad of 3,000 thugs equipped with weapons partly bought or stolen from the Philippine army, the clan is notorious for the macabre treatment it doles out to rivals.
“People are tied to trees and cut into pieces with chainsaws, or buried alive,” says the HRW spokeswoman. “One of their stunts is to remove the skin from the feet and make victims run for their lives as they shoot at them.” Around Maguindanao’s capital, Shariff Aguak, few will speak openly about Andal Ampatuan, who is provincial governor and lives behind the high walls of a mansion in the centre of the town. Off the record, some say he accumulated his wealth through ruthless land grabbing, visiting the homes of farmers with his thugs, a pistol and a wad of banknotes, and offering the worst kind of Hobson’s choice. His well-fed features fill out election posters pasted around the town for the May elections. He is rumoured to have six wives and at least 20 children, including Andal jnr, mayor of local municipality Datu Unsay.
Police believe Andal snr and his brood were enraged when they learned that local politician Esmael Mangudadatu intended to challenge Andal jnr for governor of Maguindanao in the May election. As Mangudadatu’s supporters made their way to Ampatuan town to file his candidacy on November 23rd, more than 100 armed men struck, abducting and murdering everyone in the convoy, including Mangudadatu’s wife and two sisters, one of whom was pregnant. “Their goal was simple,” says Mangudadatu. “They didn’t want to be replaced by someone who has the vision to uplift the lives of local people and bring decency to our province and our country.” Mangudadatu claims his wife called him on her mobile phone as the massacre began, reporting the presence of Andal jnr before the conversation was cut off. She was later found in the makeshift grave with deep hack marks around her neck. “What kind of people would do this?” he asks.
Observers are mystified as to why the Ampatuan clan reacted so furiously to a political challenge they were expected to win anyway; given their overwhelming local heft, Mangudadatu was a rank outsider. Zonio says the cause was hubris, and anger that they were being challenged at all. “Their pride was hurt. They believe they are the law: prosecutor, judge and executioner. They think they are demigods, untouchable.”
That overreaction has cost the family dearly. Unable to ignore the fury that followed the Philippines’ worst ever single bout of political violence, President Arroyo briefly declared martial law in the province in a bid to neutralise the local security forces, believed to be under the sway of the Ampatuans. When police raided the family’s homes in December, they reportedly found an arsenal of weapons, and sacks of partially destroyed voter identification cards.
Andal snr is now under arrest awaiting trial and his son faces 17 counts of murder. Family lawyer Sigfried Fortun is refusing to comment on the looming court battle except to say he believes they will win, but few others share that confidence.
“There is overwhelming evidence against them and the department of justice is heavily involved, so I don’t think they can escape justice,” says Mangudadatu. But he warns that the trial should be watched carefully around the world. “The relationship between the Ampatuans and the president was very close so we must be vigilant about political influence in the trial.”
Still, he believes the Maguindanao massacre could be a turning point in Filipino politics. In the last two months, the central government has made fresh moves to outlaw more than 130 private armies around the country, many linked to wealthy family dynasties like the Ampatuans.
But dismantling the power and political influence of the clans is a mammoth task, and President Arroyo is an unlikely revolutionary: her family is soaked in the wealth of the landed elite, and her husband, José Miguel, is widely believed to have used his position to enrich himself and his family.
Arroyo’s arch rival and most likely successor in the May election, Benigno Aquino III, is descended from wealthy sugar barons. “Every province in the country has a family like that,” says Irish priest and human rights activist Fr Shay Cullen. “They’re running the whole country.”
Zonio says the Ampatuans are probably a spent force in Maguindanao, but he worries about who will take their place. He relives what happened on November 23rd over and over. “I kept calling my friends but there was no answer. Eventually somebody with the killers sent me a text message asking: “Who are you?”
“When I think about what they did I have one major wish: that they bring back the death penalty. That would be a suitable punishment.”