By RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Cesar Garganta, 28, merely wanted to earn extra income for
the enrolment of his two children. Instead of money, what Garganta got
was pain and trauma.
On May 28, Garganta and his two friends went to work on a farm in
Vista Hermosa village, Macalelon, Quezon. At around 9 a.m., the three
chanced upon more than a dozen men in uniform armed with high-powered
rifles. The soldiers shouted at the three farmers and Garganta’s two
companions immediately ran away, leaving Garganta behind.
“For five hours, the soldiers beat me up. They pointed their guns at
me, pointed a bolo knife on my neck. They squeezed my nose with pliers,
pricked my ears with sticks. They blindfolded me and tied me to a tree,”
Garganta said in an interview with
Bulatlat.com. The soldiers
belonging to the Philippine Army’s 85th Infantry Battalion were
insisting that he and his fellow farmers were members of the New
People’s Army (NPA).
Garganta is only one of the 128 victims of harassment, torture and
other forms of human rights violations perpetrated by suspected state
agents in Quezon, according to human rights alliance Karapatan-Southern
Tagalog (Karapatan-ST). Eight battalions of the Armed Forces of the
Philippines, police and paramilitary are deployed in the 22 towns of the
province.
Farmer
Cesar Garganta recalls how the soldiers subjected him to physical and
psychological torture in a press conference, June 25. (Photo by Ronalyn V. Olea / bulatlat.com)
In another town, Eduardo Dela Peña, 37, also suffered harassment from the military.
On June 22, at around 3 p.m., Dela Peña was tending to his farm at
sitio Sabang, barangay (village) Pagsangahan, San Francisco, Quezon when
nine soldiers of the 59th and 74th IB of the Philippine Army approached
him.
Speaking during the kick-off activity of the mercy mission led by the
Save Bondoc Peninsula Movement,
June 25, Dela Peña said soldiers accused him of being an NPA member.
“They asked me names I do not know. Whenever I said I did not know the
persons they were asking about, they punched my stomach,” he said in the
vernacular.
The soldiers went with Dela Peña to his house. “I heard the commander
ordering his men to kill me. Not long, a soldier pointed a 45 caliber
gun at me,” he said.....
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Source: Bulatlat.com
URL:
http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/06/25/military-ops-terrorize-farmers-in-south-quezon/