Ampatuan revisited SHE SAYS Dinah S. Ventura 04/26/2010

Ampatuan revisited

SHE SAYS Dinah S. Ventura 04/26/2010 What happened on Nov. 23, 2009 remains fresh in many Filipinos’ minds. On that dark day in history, we saw just how bloody, ruthless and senseless politics can be. It forced us to look where we had long turned our faces, putting into the glaring spotlight the incidence of violence in many parts of our country — stark against our widely known cultural trait of general placidness. It happened in a little-known town in Mindanao. More than 50 unarmed civilians — “many of them women, 32 of them journalists” — were massacred by a group of armed men in broad daylight. It happened along an “off-road hillside in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province,” according to the GMA-7 timeline news report. Maguindanao, before the gory event in November, had already made it to the news because of some election controversies. It had been alleged that massive cheating had gone on in this province, but frankly, not many Filipinos cared to look deeper because Mindanao, as a whole, was already a sensitive subject.... MORE   Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100426com7.html

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