18/05/2023
CTTO
THE BLOODY ENCOUNTER IN BUKIDNON PHILIPPINES HISTORY
(TADTAD) CATHOLIC GOD SPIRIT VS CAFGU/MILITARY
A southern Philippine bishop has called for an investigation of possible links among Christian vigilantes, security forces and local politicians following a clash involving a religious cult.
The Aug. 11 clash between members of the Catholic God´s Spirit (CGS) vigilante group and an army, police and paramilitary team left 20 people dead, 16 of them residents of the CGS compound and one a civilian from outside.
Oblate Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato said the incident demonstrated the "evil" of using Christian vigilantes for military purposes. Cotabato archdiocese neighbors Malaybalay diocese, where the incident took place.
"The military should be true to its word (and) arrest and disarm them (vigilantes)," said Archbishop Quevedo, president of the Catholic Bishops´ Conference of the Philippines.
Local official Diosdado Ofngol told UCA News that the shooting in Pangantocan town, Bukidnon province, 850 kilometers southeast of Manila, began after members of the lay-led CGS resisted the joint team that went to their compound in Kimanait village.
The team went to serve an arrest warrant on CGS member Roberto Madrina Jr., charged with attempted murder in a neighboring town in 1989. It is not clear why the arrest attempt came 11 years after the alleged crime.
Ofngol, the Kimanait village district head, said police called through a megaphone from outside the compound for Madrina to surrender.
When Madrina refused to come out, the town vice mayor asked the suspect´s parents to talk him into surrendering to avoid violence, but the couple failed to convince their son.
Ofngol said 16 God´s Spirit members armed with "bolos" (long knives) crawled through high grass and sprang at paramilitary Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) members and a civilian guide.
The official denied military reports saying that the attackers also had homemade rifles. He added, though, that some CGS members seized rifles from CAFGU members they hacked to death before the military opened fire.
Local Government Secretary and National Police Commission chairman Alfredo Lim ordered an investigation Aug. 17 to determine if the joint team used excessive force against members of the CGS.
Television news footage of the incident showed men shooting at unarmed people, some of them running away and some who had dropped to the ground.
"If (police) fired several bullets on one man alone, there´s overkilling," Fernandez told reporters in Manila. He named residents who were killed including a 19-year-old woman and a 50-year-old man.
Ofngol said that Madrina joined the CGS around 1996, and that since then neither he nor the group was involved in local fights or special missions.
Relating the history of the group, he said that a native folk doctor, Gregorio Saguntao, came to the area in 1994 and built a small house where he treated all kinds of sickness. People from neighboring towns later came for treatment and some of them became followers of Saguntao.
Eventually, about 50 shacks of CGS members and their families surrounded Saguntao´s house. According to the local chief, there were about 100 CGS members and 200 other people in the compound, most of them field and sugar and corn mill workers, in recent times.
Ofngol said many group members belong to migrant families from central and northern Philippine provinces.
During the Aug. 11 fighting, Saguntao escaped on horseback and most CGS members fled into the woods. Three who stayed in the compound but were not involved in the fighting surrendered, but no arrests were made.
One of the three, Fred Obsioma, said he failed to dissuade his co-members, aged 17-37, from fighting. "They thought their ´anting-anting´ (amulets) would protect them," he said.
Scapulars and amulets with inscriptions hung around their necks, medals of saints were pinned on their clothes and they carried bottles of "holy water" to protect them from bullets and arrows.
Vicky Aquino of Malaybalay diocese´s radio station said some "tadtad" (chop-chop) cultic vigilante groups that were inactive for about 10 years are rearming for "encounters" with Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels. She said they see the collapse of government-rebel peace negotiations as imminent.
