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By Jomar
Canlas and Inday espina-varona
Second of
three parts
For nearly two
years now, a thin, bed-ridden man has spent his days and nights
feverishly writing letters to government officials.
Alberto
Martinez’s letter file is several inches thick. The recipients
range from local military commanders to top brass in Camp Aguinaldo,
from provincial prosecutors all the way up the justice secretary, to
the Ombudsman and even President Arroyo.
Martinez
hasn’t been asking for money—though he’s badly in need of
financial aid. He hasn’t been asking for a job—though he lost
his livelihood. All he’s asked for is justice, and he’s found
out the hard way how its slow pace could jeopardize one’s life.
Martinez knows
about danger. He barely survived an ambush on April 10, 2005.
Gunmen waylaid
the 46-year-old commentator of the Manila Broadcasting Corp.’s
Radio Natin, in Kabacan, North Cotabato.
Two bullets
went into Martinez’s back. One remains lodged in his liver.
Martinez, host
of Magandang Gabi Kabacan and a Protestant pastor, credits his
survival to residents of Barangay Osias. Neighbors rushed to his
aid, scaring off the assailants.
The attack
failed to kill Martinez but it ended his broadcast career.
The bullets
shattered two vertebrae, leaving Martinez bed-ridden.
Loss of income
meant he could no follow-up on treatment, including a critical
operation on his liver.
Even with
these setbacks, Martinez kept his priorities straight. He filed
charges against his suspected attackers in May 2005.
Martinez’s
affidavit identified one of the assailants as Cpl. Alvaro Obregon,
member of the 75th Infantry Battalion assigned in Kabacan.
Martinez said
Obregon shot him with a .45-caliber pistol. The soldier, he added,
was with Romeo Araneta and Ronilo Quiñonez, Martinez’s neighbors
in Barangay Osias.
Martinez said
the three men were on a motorcycle, with Araneta driving, Quiñonez
in the middle and Obregon at the rear.
He saw them
idling along the highway and take a U-turn to follow him.
He stopped,
thinking they had something important to relay.
What he got
wasn’t news but bullets.
As he
struggled to overcome injuries, Martinez tried to investigate the
reasons for the attack.
Martinez’s
pet peeve was—and still remains—the traffic in illegal drugs.
He learned
Obregon had felt slighted when Martinez discussed the illegal drug
trade in their village.
The
broadcaster said he never mentioned Obregon’s name in his program.
He did not even know Obregon was linked to drugs.
What he knew
was that Kabacan was a hot area for the narcotics trade, identified
by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) as one of three
North Cotabato towns with a “problematic” drug problem.
Kabacan is
also considered as “dropping point” of methamphetamine
hydrochloride, locally known as shabu, coming from different towns
in Maguindanao.
Like other
media victims of violence, Martinez had long been receiving death
threats. Threats were so regular that he had become “immune.”
Many of these threats, often delivered through text messages, had to
do with his antinarcotics crusade.
Appeal
Martinez
approached the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)
late last year, complaining of inaction on his criminal complaints,
filed with the North Cotabato Provincial Prosecution Office, against
Obregon and the two other suspects.
“I was told
that the prosecution would wait for the results of the investigation
of the Ombudsman for the Military before they can file the case in
court,” he said.
Martinez also
tried to enroll with the Department of Justice program’s Witness
Protection Program. That request was also ignored.
“I fear for
my life and for my family. I know they will not stop until they’ll
get me because they want me dead,” he said in January this year.
All the time
he was following up his case, Martinez was already incapacitated.
Death threats forced his family to transfer from one residence to
another.
He survived
only because his neighbors cared. They provided security and shelter
and, often times, food for the family and medicine for the very ill
broadcaster.
Martinez could
not understand the cold shoulder.
“They
[officials] urge us to cooperate, tell witnesses to stand up for the
truth,” he pointed out. “I did and nobody listened.”
It wasn’t
for lack of trying.
Martinez wrote
to President Arroyo on August 3. On August 24 he received a reply
from Bobby Dumlao, director of the Presidential Action Center of the
Office of the President. Dumlao said his case was already referred
to Deputy Ombudsman for Military Orlando Casimiro for consideration.
Martinez knew
that. What he was asking was, swifter action so he could be enrolled
in the WPP.
Loopholes
The
country’s WPP was born of good intentions. Yet it is fraught with
contradictions that cancel out noble motives.
You cannot
join the WPP unless a case starts to move. A case cannot start to
move without witnesses.
Martinez was
his best witness. He had gone the extra mile to pursue his case. His
neck was on the line. It wasn’t his fault that the case wasn’t
moving.
The threats
continued to rain in the months following his appeal to Mrs. Arroyo.
The NUJP sent
off a flurry of letters in a bid to help Martinez.
The letters,
addressed to President Arroyo, Justice Secretary Raul M. Gonzalez,
the Armed Forces and the Department of Defense, warned that the slow
pace of justice was tantamount to letting a victim hang in the wind.
Despite his
injuries, Martinez expressed willingness to testify before Philip
Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings. Maybe
something could be done, he said, to help others in similar
situation. There has to be a way, he told colleagues, to end the
chicken-and-egg situation.
Ombudsman
action
On Friday, one
year and 10 months since his shooting, Ombudsman Merceditas
Navarro-Gutierrez ordered the filing of criminal charges against
Martinez’s attacker.
In an
interview with The Manila Times, Gutierrez said she signed a
resolution indicting Obregon for frustrated murder.
Gutierrez
assured that her office would give special attention to cases
involving extrajudicial killings, including those of journalists.
Gutierrez will
meet with Alston on Tuesday.
The Ombudsman
resolution paves the way for Martinez’s admission to the WPP.
Overall Deputy
Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro Jr., former chief of the Ombudsman for
the Military, said the case would be filed in the RTC of North
Cotabato.
Kidapawan City
North Cotabato City Prosecutor Al Calica will handle the
prosecution.
Casimiro said
WPP Director Leo Dacera would fast track Martinez’s enrollment in
the program, a move that would allow him to get medical aid.
“We will
give the necessary endorsement to Mr. Martinez to be able to help
him in his admission to the Witness Protection Program because, I
believe, he is still getting death threats despite his disabled
condition,” Casimiro told The Times.
Dacera has
good relations with media groups following up the cases of
journalists. He was instrumental, with Justice Secretary Raul M.
Gonzalez, of getting the family of slain Pagadian journalist Edgar
Damalerio reinstated into the WPP.
Calica
explained the cases needed to go to the Ombudsman for the Military,
even after his office found probable cause, because the accused is a
soldier.
What about
others?
Martinez
continues to receive threats but he considers himself “lucky”
because pressure from media groups spurred officials into action. He
wonders how nonjournalists fare in the bureaucratic maze.
It is a
question that also remains with Damalerio’s widow, Gemma.
The Arroyo
administration touts the Damalerio case, one of four that have led
to convictions, as a victory for press freedom and proof of the
administration’s determined bid to defeat a culture of impunity.
That is hardly
the case. As the NUJP told Alston in its report to the UN Rapporteur,
“media groups had to push the government every step of the way.”
“In fact,
government neglect and possible collusion by officials with the
killer of Damalerio led to the death of a witness and endangered
another witness and the victim’s family,” the group said.
Gemma still
remembers how it felt to be cut loose, unmoored, months after her
husband’s killer, Police Officer 1 Guillermo Wapile, then under
preventive custody, waltzed out of the Pagadian provincial police
command on the eve of the issuance of an arrest warrant.
That paralyzed
the case. Six months after, Gemma and two other key witnesses were
kicked out of the WPP—for failure of the case to move.
The case
wasn’t moving because police officers had freed Wapile.
(To be
continued)
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