PHILIPPINE ARMY PATROL KILLS 17 CIVILIANS AS WAR WITH LEFTISTS RESUMES

President Corazon Aquino received a stark lesson in the brutal nature of war two days after she ordered the army to resume operations against the communist-led New People´s Army (NPA).

An army patrol massacred 17 persons -- including an 82-year-old blind woman and a four-year-old girl -- in a small village at the foot of the Sierra Madre Mountains, 140 km north of Manila, and then looted and burned their huts.

The massacre took place early Feb. 10, two days after the 60-day truce with the NPA ended.

Initial military reports claimed that Army Lieutenant Edgar Dizon and 11 NPA members were killed in heavy fighting in Namulandayan, a village in Lupao town, Nueva Ecija province.

But survivors told a different story. The 20 soldiers, they said, arrived in the village at 6:45 a.m., walked quietly through one cluster of homes and headed toward another about 100 meters away.

When the soldiers were halfway, two shots rang out, followed by a burst of automatic fire, sending residents scurrying into hiding. When the firing stopped, the lieutenant lay dead.

The soldiers told the people to come back to their homes. They lined up a group of men, women, and youngsters in front of one cluster of homes. They accused the civilians of being NPA and then shot them to death, survivors said.

An older woman said the soldiers then looted the houses, taking "money, cassettes and small things such as perfume, trinkets, clothes."

Ludovico Acosta, whose father, mother and two brothers, aged 23 and 13, were killed, held his baby son and told UCA News he wanted justice for his dead relatives.

They were neither communists nor rebels, he said. "We are poor simple farmers."

Survivors included a high school boy and a young girl, who later had her hand amputated because of a gunshot wound. Carrying a five-month old baby, they fled from the scene of the slaughter, crawling through the rice fields to safety.

The baby´s mother was among the dead.

One woman said she was saved from death by the arrival of an army helicopter bringing reinforcements. She told neighbors, "They were going to shoot me, then they heard the helicopter and stopped."

Her husband, she said, was stabbed to death by the soldiers.

-- Aquino has promised there will be no whitewash of the massacre, but priests in Lupao and nearby San Jose City were skeptical. "She has never punished the military, no matter what they do," one said.

The survivors do not blame Aquino for the massacre, but they say that despite her plans and promises, they are worse off economically than they were last year.

Asked if he believed in Aquino´s government, a survivor said stonily: "I don´t know. We want justice for the poor people and the dead. We want to see the soldiers who did it punished."

-- Sacred Heart Missioner Father Martin Winnips, parish priest of Lupao, blamed Aquino partially for the massacre because she told the army to go after the rebels.

"She told the army to observe the human rights of the civilians, but the army seems to have thought they were free to do whatever they wanted to do just as in the old days," he told UCA News Feb. 15.

"The people killed were all residents of the barrio," he said. "There were no NPAs killed. I know these people. I say Mass there and hear confessions.

"I buried the charred bodies of two little girls yesterday. We had to put the two little bodies in one coffin, since we had no other coffins. It was terrible.

"The people are terrified. They´ve lost faith in everyone, even in the Church, I fear. It was a massacre and Cory (Aquino) must share the guilt."

Some observers assign part of the blame to the NPA which should not have engaged the soldiers within the barrio.

They should know from past experience that the soldiers would wreak vengeance on the civilians, these observers said.

Sacred Heart Missioner Father Rudolfo Abao, head of the Church´s human rights work in Nueva Ecija province said at the victims´ funeral Feb. 14, "We have to get justice for the dead.

"This was a senseless slaughter. As Christians we can´t accept this injustice. We cannot let the military dominate innocent people. We cannot let the deaths of so many go unpunished."

Some of the victims buried in the Catholic ceremony, belonged to the Philippine Independent Church, a schismatic group that broke with the Catholic Church at the turn of the century. "It makes no difference now," people said.

-- An official close to Aquino said she has been "sold a bill of goods" by military leaders who have told her the armed forces are different from what they were in the time of former President Ferdinand Marcos.

The army, she has been told, can handle determined guerrillas while respecting the human rights of the rural people and not seriously interfering with economic development, including a land reform program.

"It´s clear this is not possible," the official said.

One veteran diplomat told UCA News, "Mrs. Aquino is lucky to have this happen now at the beginning of the war when she is extremely popular. She has time to learn from her mistakes."

The massacre in Lupao may not have been without purpose if it brings home to Aquino the animal fury the civil war unleashes, and if she then has the political will to stop government operations, he said.

-- The massacre is the third time in 10 years that Lupao civilians have been killed in the NPA-government war.

The town voted against the ratification of the new constitution because, according to Father Winnips, most of the 25,000 residents are Ilocanos, natives of Marcos´ home region and therefore, loyal to him.

The area is also considered NPA territory and the guerillas urged a "No" vote. The village people are not rebels, Father Winnips insisted. They pay taxes to the NPA because they are forced.

Most of the land in the barrio is cattle ranch land held by two Manila families. Land reform has not touched the village. The people are tenant farmers or leaseholders.

The families used to go to the mountains to gather wood for their own cooking or to make firewood which they would sell. They also grazed their animals and worked small vegetable plots in the mountains.

They cannot do these things any more. The soldiers guard the mountain trails which are also used by the NPA.

END

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