Bloody record against the masses in Cagayan and Apayao
Aguinaldo served in the 1980s as the intelligence officer, and later as the project officer of the counter-insurgency program dubbed "Oplan Katatagan sa Cagayan" that was planned and directed by the CIA. Aguinaldo was directly under the wings of Juan Ponce Enrile who served as defense chief of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Under "Oplan Katatagan" in the fi rst half of the 1980s, no less than 350,000 peasants and their families from more than 300 villages in Cagayan and Apayao were forced to vacate their homes, fi elds and places of livelihood. The villagers hailed from the municipalities of Gattaran, Lasam, Sto. Ni�o, Lallo, Rizal, Buguey, Alcala, Amulung, Baggao, Pe�a blanca and Piat in Cagayan and the municipalities of Flora, Luna, Conner and Pud tol in Apa yao. They were made to live under subhuman conditions in numerous hamlets (guarded concentration camps) around military camps of the AFP, PC-INP and Integrated Civilian Home Defense Forces.  |
Aguinaldo and Enrile were raving madmen in their desire to eradicate the "insurgency". The salvagings, massacres, torture, mass evacuations and psywar that they perpetrated were calculated to terrorize the people of Cagayan, destroy their newly built militancy and revolutionary organizations and to nullify the resounding victories of the implementation of the minimum policy of agrarian revolution. There was hardly a barrio in Cagayan and Apayao that was not affected by the madness of Aguinaldo and his cohorts in the military, police and paramilitary forces.
In December of 1980, truckloads of military men under Aguinaldo swooped down on several villages to order a mass evacuation. They threatened to kill anybody who failed to obey. Men, women, children and farm animals were herded out, forced to walk several kilometers along muddy, mountainous trails towards the main roads, municipal centers and barrios that were guarded by military camps. Many infants and elderly folk did not survive the ordeal.
But the masses fought back. In the evacuation camps in Lallo, Cagayan, the people staged daily rallies along the national highway and appealed for help from the townspeople and passersby. They petitioned the local government to allow them to return to their barrios immediately and safely, decisively negotiated for indemnifi cation and got the support of many more people. Then Mayor Aladino Dupaya could not but agree to the people's just demands.
 |
In Masi, Rizal in Zinundungan Valley, the hamletted Malawegs defi ed the AFP and left the fenced encampment to return to their homes and fi elds. Thousands of peasants and students in Gattaran held marchrallies with coffi ns to protest the massacre of children in Naddungan and other barrios.
With the continuing advance of the militant mass movement in the region and the call for a nationwide boycott against the bogus presidential election of Marcos in 1981, Aguinaldo and his men went on a rampage. There was an unprecedented number of tortures, salvagings, massacres and other brutalities committed by the fascists against the people of Cagayan and Apayao. More and wider areas were declared "no man's land". Houses were burned down, fields and crops destroyed. Suspected members of revolutionary mass organizations were harassed, arrested, detained, tortured, subjected to indignities.
Upon his orders, troops of the 17th IB-PA and the 51st PC Ranger Battalion killed scores of civilians suspected of supporting the revolutionary movement. Forty-seven persons were murdered in the town of Lasam alone.
Aguinaldo staged a "mass surrender" of some 150 civilians and NPA relatives on one occasion in Gattaran in 1983. To pressure them to "surrender", he fi rst ordered the abduction of children of known NPA fighters. The civilians were forced to show up as "surrenderees", and were later enlisted as members of the CHDF or as civilian informers in exchange for their lives and temporary liberty.
Villagers were forced to attend meetings called by Aguinaldo and made to line up as each one was interrogated to name relatives in the NPA. Aguinaldo and his men incessantly harassed families or close relatives of NPA fi ghters to force the revolutionaries to surrender.
Those who refused were repeatedly struck with pieces of wood that were two inches across. Children and women were not spared. Many were left with deep psychological trauma due to experiences in the hands of Aguinaldo. Children of NPA fighters were abducted and brought to military camps and the women were raped or used by Aguinaldo to sow intrigues through their husbands and relatives.
Some surrenderees were formed as the so-called Cagayan 100. This paramilitary group served as his private army. He used them in counterrevolutionary and antipeople activities, as his personal bodyguards and later, as goons for his electoral bids and dirty politics.
With the over throw of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, Col. Rodolfo Aguinaldo was immediately appointed provincial commander of the Philippine Constabulary in Cagayan and as intelligence chief of PC Recom 2. It was a "reward" for his participation in EDSA 1.
Soon after, he was involved in coup attempts against the Aquino regime in 1987 and 1989. In 1990, with the help of his Cagayan 100, Aguinaldo staged his own mock coup in Tuguegarao that led to the killing of then AFP spokesperson Col. Oscar Florendo . He then abandoned his Cagayan 100 and went into "hiding", until he was absolved by Fidel Ramos. The case against Aguinaldo on the murder of Colonel Florendo did not prosper in the reactionary courts.
| Notorious torturer of the 5th CSU
As soon as he graduated from the Philippine Military Academy in 1972, Aguinaldo joined the notorious 5th Constabulary Security Unit or 5th CSU as a second lieutenant. The 5th CSU was responsible for the arrest, torture and murder of many Party cadres and mass activists during the Marcos fascist dictatorship. He was a member of the unit for almost a decade. During his stint, Aguinaldo was one of the leading torturers of political prisoners in the custody of the 5th CSU (despite their having been arrested and detained by other military units). Among them were:
- Jose Ma. Sison (arrested and tortured in 1977);
- Jose "Pete" Lacaba and Bonifacio Ilagan (1974);
- Johann Baroso, Nenita Luneta-Evangelista and her three-year-old child Ningning (abducted and murdered in 1977);
- The Luneta brothers Franco, Domingo and Ernesto (arrested and tortured in 1974);
- Purificacion Pedro (wounded and brought to hospital, where she was raped and later hanged in what was made to appear as a suicide);
- Edgar Jopson (arrested and tortured in 1975);
- Dr. Juan Escandor (arrested in 1983, with his body later found with the skull cavity stuffed with his underwear); his companion Yolanda Gordula remains missing to this day;
- Marco Palo (arrested in 1982; he was rushed to the V. Luna Memorial Hospital on the brink of death after intense torture by Aguinaldo); and
- Venerando Villacillo (abducted, tortured and murdered in 1985. His body was burned and thrown off a cliff).
|
|
