Philippines on trial over hostage
tale By Leslie Davis
MANILA
- American missionary Gracia Burnham returned to the
Philippines last week to turn the tables on the very
people who held her captive for one year in the jungles
of the southern island of Basilan; the Abu Sayyaf, a
group listed by the United States as a terrorist
organization with ties to al-Qaeda.
But when her
day-long testimony at the closed-door trial was
finished, the main story bannered by government
prosecutors was not how she fingered the various thugs
who kidnapped and murdered innocents. The main theme the
government wanted the Filipino public and the world to
know was how Burnham exonerated the armed forces of the
Philippines from charges she made in her 2003 book,
In the Presence of My Enemies. In the book, she
claimed that certain army members connived with the Abu
Sayyaf to divvy up millions of dollars in ransom money
the group had raised through their kidnapping sprees.
It was a stinging charge that to this day has
caused embarrassment and denial among the army and the
government, and resulted in nodding heads from a public
that has long suspected corruption at the top of their
armed forces. State prosecutor Nestor Lazaro quoted
Burnham as saying, "There is no collusion between the
ASG [Abu Sayyaf] and the military." Senior state
prosecutor Leo Cacera followed: "Her statement in court
should put everything - the matter, all doubts - to
rest," he said.
It was then the turn of acting
secretary Merceditas Gutierrez, who said, Burnham's
testimony, "given under oath and in open court, should
clarify any misunderstanding that her book might have
created". Buoyed by the happy news, even President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo got in on the congratulatory
parade, thanking Burnham for upholding "the integrity
and uncommon valor of our armed forces".
There
was only one problem with this mad dash by the
Philippine government to tell one and all that Burnham
had exonerated the army: it simply wasn't true. Burnham
never said anything of the kind.
By law,
criminal cases in the Philippines are supposed to be
open to the public. In this particular case against
several alleged Abu Sayyaf members, however, neither the
public nor the press had been allowed to witness the
proceedings. The press might have gone on "quoting"
Gracia Burnham, and the government would surely have let
them, had it not been for one enterprising reporter from
a local television station. He just happened to chance
on the judge's staff while they were reviewing a
videotape of the proceedings.
In that tape, the
reporter noticed that Burnham never said anything that
the government claimed she had said. Several times while
on the stand, Burnham was asked by defense lawyers if
she thought there was "connivance" between the military
and Abu Sayyaf. Even before she had a chance to answer,
the three government prosecutors stood up and made
objections to the question, all of which the judge
immediately sustained.
While Burnham was
prohibited from speaking with the press and was quickly
whisked out of the country, her book gives the real
answers to the questions asked. Overall, the book is a
harrowing and spellbinding first-hand account of her and
her husband Martin's year in captivity at the hands of
the Abu Sayyaf.
The couple had spent 15 years
performing missionary work in remote corners of the
Philippines and decided to celebrate their 18th wedding
anniversary with a vacation at the luxury resort Dos
Palmas on Palawan island. They were seized on May 28,
2001, along with 20 other hostages, and taken 400
kilometers across the open ocean to the bandits' island
lair of Basilan. One year later, in a botched rescue
attempt by the Philippine armed forces, Gracia was
freed, while Martin and a Filipino nurse who had also
been taken hostage were killed in the crossfire.
The book is a must-read for anyone who wants an
insider's look at how one particular fundamentalist
terrorist group operates first hand. Having lived a
miserable year with the group in the forbidding jungles,
she describes every detail of how the Abu Sayyaf
operates, and the circumstances in which they function;
the cold-blooded brutality of her captors, the hypocrisy
of their religious beliefs, and how the group used their
religion as a mere veneer in order to get millions of
dollars in ransom.
When the book came out in
2003, it became an instant best seller throughout the
Philippines. But its riveting blow-by-blow account of
life with murderous bandits was not the only reason the
book created a stir. What really caught Filipinos'
attention were the several passages where Gracia writes
of what many Filipinos had suspected all along; the
hefty amount of ransom that made its way into the hands
of the Abu Sayyaf in exchange for the freedom of some
hostages, and, more importantly, how the Abu Sayyaf
often works in connivance with certain members of the
army in raising and sharing that ransom.
On
pages 222-223, Gracia writes about how, after months on
the run and being exhausted and hungry, the group's food
supply suddenly changed for the better.
"The
armed forces were feeding us!" she writes. "A group of
them [army] met our guys [Abu Sayyaf] and handed over
quantities of rice, dried fish, coffee and sugar. This
happened several times over the course of a few weeks.
Why in the world did President Arroyo's troops provide
the Abu Sayyaf with their daily bread? We were told that
it was because Sabaya [the Abu Sayyaf's spokesman] was
wheeling and dealing with the AFP [army] general of that
area over how to split up any ransom that might be paid.
Arlyn de la Cruz [a television reporter from Manila who
had managed to find the group to do a story] had warned
us about that. 'You know, this is going to be a really
big deal,' she [Arlyn] said, 'and everybody is going to
expect their share'," Burnham writes.
"Sabaya
was willing to give the general 20% of the action. But
the messenger reported back that this wasn't enough. The
general wanted 50% - when his own government steadfastly
condemned the ransom concept altogether."
Burnham also writes in detail of the infamous
Lamitan Hospital siege, still highly controversial
today. In this incident, the Philippine military had the
entire group surrounded - along with their hostages -
after they took refuge inside a hospital in the small
Basilan town of Lamitan.
Burnham writes that
after a night-long gun fight, a jeep filled with
high-powered guns and ammunition pulled up outside the
hospital entrance and out jumped several cohorts of the
Abu Sayyaf. The newcomers explained they were able to
get through the cordon by telling the soldiers they were
the bodyguards of the provincial governor. The
provincial governor, it turns out, was one of the
founders of the Abu Sayyaf who had had a falling out
with the group.
Then the inexplicable happened.
The military pulled its troops out from behind the
hospital and soon after, the Abu Sayyaf along with its
hostages and new weapons, was able to escape. The
Lamitan siege was one of the centerpieces of the
Senate's hearings in 2002 into the charges of collusion.
A former hostage testified that he was released because
ransom was paid and that certain high-ranking military
members were involved. Twenty-seven residents from
Basilan testified as well. Most claimed there was
collusion between the military and the Abu Sayyaf. The
Senate report concluded the same.
"The Senate
committees," the report stated, "are of the belief that,
indeed collusion between some officers of the AFP and
the ASG exists." They concluded that there was "strong
circumstantial evidence", and recommended that the
Department of Justice and the Ombudsman conduct further
investigation into the charges. The Senate also
recommended that the three officers linked to the
charges be court martialled. To this day, however,
despite the Senate's recommendations, no charges have
been brought against the officers.
Clearly, the
behavior of the government only creates more questions
than it answers. Why is the Philippine government acting
as a defense lawyer for its own military and not trying
to get to the bottom of these serious allegations? And
if there were some members of the military colluding
with the Abu Sayyaf group, then shouldn't they be among
the defendants? How much power does the military hold
over what is supposedly a democratic civilian
government?
These questions are not just
important to Filipinos, but should also alert the rest
of the international community to the muddled and
complicated situation that exists in the southern
Philippines. After September 11, 2001, Arroyo, who was
installed as president due mostly to a military-backed
coup in January of that year, was one of the first to
stand up and declare her support for America's newly
declared "war on terrorism". She even went so far as to
declare the Philippines full of terrorists, specifically
the Abu Sayyaf. This led to her bringing in the American
military to help train the Philippine military to defeat
the Abu Sayyaf.
For many Filipinos, though, the
Abu Sayyaf isn't a terrorist group. They are a bunch of
murderous thugs who use Islam as a shield to justify
their existence and raise tons of cash. They are no
different than any of the many other kidnap-for-ransom
gangs that exist in various places in the Philippines,
but mostly the southern island of Mindanao.
The
idea that certain members of the military hierarchy may
be profiting from the murder and kidnapping of innocent
civilians, while underpaid and under trained foot
soldiers do all the fighting and dying, is a scandal
most Filipinos want to solve. The Senate has said it now
wants to reopen the investigation into this alleged
collusion.
The government of Arroyo, however,
has said that to go back and reinvestigate would be like
beating a dead horse. Which, for most ordinary Filipinos
seems quite unfortunate. For if the allegations are
true, and most believe they are, then the existence of
the Abu Sayyaf cannot just be explained by simply
calling them "terrorists" and blaming their actions on
Osama bin Laden.
Their existence is a reflection
of those whom they claim to do battle against. In other
words, the problem is home-grown, an ugly representation
of the breakdown of law and order, the responsibility
for which can only be placed at the front door of the
Philippine government.
(Copyright 2004 Asia
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