Part of the problem
May 9th, 2003
In accusing a Filipino general of colluding with the Abu Sayyaf bandit group, Gracia Burnham has joined at least two other former hostages who have made the same claim.
Former Abu Sayyaf hostage Raul Recio agreed with Burnham that there was indeed Abu Sayyaf-military collusion, as claimed by Burnham in her newly released book on her captivity by the Abu Sayyaf, In the Presence of My Enemies.
Recio, a travel magazine publisher who paid the ASG a P1 million ransom in exchange for the release of his sister-in-law in December 2001( he and his wife escaped from the Abu Sayyaf in June that year), had claimed before a 2002 hearing of the Senate Committees on Defense, Justice and Human Rights that certain military officials were in league with the bandits. He arrived at that conclusion, he said, because the Abu Sayyaf had somehow managed to escape from Lamitan, and because it would regularly come upon food and government-issued medicine along the roads or trails they passed.
Recio also told the media that Burnham had told them, as she claims in her book, that it was the military that killed her husband and wounded her last year during the attack by a military rescue team on the ASG.
According to Recio, Burnham had told them exactly that during a conversation she had with other ex-hostages in Manila shortly before she was flown home to the United States last year.
Also a former hostage of the Abu Sayyaf, Fr. Cirilo Nacorda, parish priest of Lamitan, Basilan, had earlier claimed the same collusion. He had accused ranking military officers before the same Senate Committee of sharing ransom payments with the Abu Sayyaf, and of receiving bribes from them in exchange for their escape from the siege of Lamitan.
The Burnhams, Recio, his wife and his sister in law, as well as other hostages were abducted by the Abu Sayyaf from the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan, and then taken to Lamitan. Recio and his wife escaped from the Abu Sayyaf in Lamitan, where Father Nacorda was briefly taken hostage.
Recio’s and Father Nacorda’s Senate testimonies among others were enough to convince the Senate Committee to recommend court-martial proceedings against three officers, Maj. Gen. Romeo Dominguez, Col. Juventud Narcise and Maj. Eliseo Campued. All the senators except Gregorio Honasan agreed with the inquiry’s findings by signing its report.
While still in the Philippines, Grace Burnham had discreetly avoided saying anything against the military, which was after all widely credited with rescuing her, although it also killed her husband and fellow missionary Martin, as well as Filipino nurse Edibora Yap. Apparently, Burnham’s silence was only momentary, though no one can blame her for not saying anything until she was on American soil. It is just as well that she has broken her silence, and put her claims in print besides.
The claims of collusion between certain military officials and the Abu Sayyaf is an unsettled issue, which if true would explain the apparently inexhaustible capacity of the bandit group to elude capture, and worse, suggest that the effort to stop its depredations is doomed to failure.
These claims also further tarnish the already less than sterling image of the entire Armed Forces of the Philippines, in whose ranks there must be honest, dedicated and selfless professionals.
Thanks among others to the Abu Sayyaf and the endless bungling of the campaign against it, as well as the brutal torture and killing of community leaders and social activists in the Philippine countryside, the AFP is in danger of regaining its martial law reputation as an institution of crooks and torturers who are above the law. That reputation, by making ordinary citizens cynical of its intentions, undermines its national security mandate more than any insurgency. It is therefore to its interest as well as that of the rule of law for the AFP to put the matter to a credible rest.
It will not do to accuse Burnham of being brainwashed by her captors, or of declaring her accusations unfair because many Filipino soldiers have died in the course of the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf.
If, as one military spokesman alleged in response to Burnham’s claims, the Abu Sayyaf put on a drama for the hostages’ benefit to convince them that certain officials—at least one general, according to Burnham—were in collusion with them and in fact bargaining with the Group for a 50-percent share of whatever ransom the hostages paid, the logical question to ask is, For what purpose?
Was it for the ideological end of convincing the hostages that the AFP is corrupt, so that the ASG may gain the hostages’ sympathies? If true it would be a ploy worthy of any propaganda effort orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels. It would also be a plan too complex for the apparently limited capacities of the Abu Sayyaf leadership to engage in enterprises other than kidnapping. It would also be pointless, given the suffering the Group was inflicting on the hostages, and its brutal execution by beheading of some of its other hostages including the Burnhams’ fellow American Guillermo Sobero.
On the other hand, neither Burnham, Recio or Nacorda have ever questioned the fact that ordinary Filipino soldiers had died in either the efforts to rescue them or in the overall campaign against the Abu Sayyaf. What they claim is that certain military officers at the highest levels were in collusion with the Abu Sayyaf, which if true would be a fact those officers would hardly have entrusted to ordinary enlisted men.
That many soldiers died in the Burnham rescue (45, according to former AFP chief of staff retired Gen. Roy Cimatu) does not prove the absence of collusion between high-ranking military officers and the Abu Sayyaf. It suggests something far worse: that those very same officers were willing to sacrifice the lives of Filipino soldiers under their command for the sake of a share in ransom money.
The Burnham claim that the soldiery of the Republic appeared to have fired indiscriminately enough to kill Martin Burnham and Edibora Yap is on the other hand an accusation that similarly indicts the officers in charge of the so-called rescue rather than the soldiers themselves. Such a level of incompetence based on a total disregard for the hostages’ safety suggests bad or even nonexistent training, for which their officers are supposed to be responsible.
The AFP and its various spokesmen cannot simply respond to Gracia Burnham’s charge with speculations, in the hope that public attention will eventually wane. Given the similarity of the claims of Recio and Nacorda and the findings of the Senate Committee, the best the AFP leadership can do is to encourage an impartial inquiry into the issue for the sake of both its credibility as well as the well-being and peace of mind of this country. The continuing absence of such an inquiry on the other hand only reinforces already widespread public belief that in far too many instances, the AFP is not part of the solution but part of the problem.
(abs-cbnNEWS.com, May 8, 2003)