Wasted lives, wasted honor

Full-automatic fire from the rifles of police intelligence and army special forces operators snuffed the lives of 13 men that fateful Sunday afternoon on Maharlika Highway, near the wooded boundary of Atimonan and Plaridel, Quezon. From the initial reports of the PNP fact-finding team, some 41 policemen and soldiers were deployed around that checkpoint at Barangay Lumutan. Of the 16 PNP personnel, only one was in uniform, the rest in civilian clothing. The army soldiers, 25 special forces operators all of them, were in their BDU’s (battle dress uniforms), standard for operations in that kind of environment. If all these men fired their weapons, they would all be responsible for the killing of these 13 individuals – some of whom later on were  identified as fellow policemen and fellow soldiers.

Why did it happen?

Why would everyone in the two-vehicle convoy have to be killed in the name of law enforcement? Why would trained police intel personnel and special forces operators fire 186 bullets into one vehicle and 50 on the other to make sure the convoy stops so they could investigate whether these men were really guns-for-hire and criminal elements?

Finally, were they real criminal elements? Or were they victims of a massacre?

There simply are too many questions people are asking, especially the families of those men killed, who couldn’t understand why their loved ones are now dead, when all they knew about them were they were just with friends and business associates when they left home. And the initial statements that came from higher-ups in the PNP and the AFP hours after the incident were not of any help at all. All of those making the statements were singing almost the same tune – that they believed the story of the checkpoint teamleaders, that those men in the two vehicles were criminal elements, that the men in the vehicles fired first.

None of the initial statements even expressed any kind of sympathy for the families of those men killed at the checkpoint. From the chief of the PNP, Gen. Purisima, down to the provincial police commander of Quezon, Sr. Supt. De Leon, everyone expected to say anything about the incident made us believe it was a legitimate operation, and the targets were hardened criminal elements.

Until the names started coming out. Then doubt started creeping in.

Police Supt. Alfredo P. Consemino, PNPA Class 1986, Chief of the regional headquarters support group at MIMAROPA Regional Police Office.

He had two escorts with him who also came from MIMAROPA, SPO1 Gruet Mantuano and PO1 Jeffrey Valdez. None of them had derogatory records with the PNP.

1LT Jean Beam Justiniani, just in the prime of his career as an Air Force pilot. Recently assigned at the 15^th Strike Wing in Cavite.

He was with Staff Sgt. Arman Lescano, another Air Force man, assigned to the Air Education and Training Command. Lescano used to be a college professor in Cavite before he joined the military. He just got back in November from UN Peacekeeping duties in Liberia, and was supposed to retire this year. None of these men had derogatory records on file with the AFP.

And the names of the civilians, including Tirso Lontoc Jr., an acknowledged environmental activist and relative of Sec. Proceso Alcala of the dept. of agriculture.

From all the other facts emerging, it won’t be long before someone in the NBI investigating team says the incident was a rubout, an ambush, even a planned massacre.

I don’t know how you feel about this, but when you have no survivors in a situation where people could have survived even if wounded, there will be a lot of questions. Remember, two of the 13 were still alive when the guns stopped firing, but they reportedly died on the way to the hospital, borne by the same men who fired a total of 236 bullets into the two vehicles. What do you make of that?

We’ve seen way too many shootouts and rubouts around us, most of them never resolved and those responsible never punished. We now seem to be immune to these things and just accept what authorities – those who won in the “shootouts” – tell us. But what about those men who can no longer speak for themselves? Who will be there to speak for them aside from their close family members and some friends brave enough to speak out?

I dare those who knew Consemino, Justiniani, Lescano, Mantuano, and Valdez to speak out. I dare those who knew the real persons of the other civilians killed to speak out and say the truth. Or at least publicly express some sympathy, so that people would know that these men now being branded as criminals when they’re dead had honorable careers when they were alive.

In the lives of the soldiers and policemen who serve this country, honor is something the good men cherish, and the bad ones disregard. After the Atimonan incident, it is sad that the families will bury the dead men with the stigma that the police had branded them criminals without knowing what really happened before, during, and after the incident. It’s even sadder knowing that, in the current state of things in this country, it will take years before the honor they’ve struggled to keep can ever be restored. We, the living, can do something for them and their families. For if we do nothing, the bad and dishonor will prevail.