A Heyday of Violence

I have been covering the police beat for quite some time, and it’s my first time to meet a police officer at night over a bottle of few beers just to confirm my suspicions. Two murders in a day and a robbery at broad daylight, 12:00 noon in the middle of a busy commercial town. I can’t believe this is happening in Nueva Vizcaya – a province that was once an awardee of a Hall of Fame as the Philippine’s most peaceful province.

While military operations are going berserk to crush the MILF rebels, displacing hundreds of families in North Cotabato, a “cheap” gun-for-hire gang and a kidnap for ransom syndicate are having a heyday, sowing terror in this part of Cagayan Valley.

Kidnappers brought to Bayombong on 01 July a victim, an Indian national, whom they seized in Tarlac City. The attempt to collect ransom was foiled after police figured out a vehicle involved in a mishap belonged to the kidnap victim.

On 06 July, a husband and wife who own a drugstore in Solano were peppered with bullets, the bag carrying their daily sales was carted away. The case remains unsolved.

Yesterday, 13 August, a woman who is a scion of a pioneering batch of migrants from India that settled in Bayombong was shot dead before noon near the town’s busiest place – the public market. On the evening of that same day, a village chief was shot dead in a dark portion of a road while on his way back home from a wake. Still on that same day at noon, three robbers took away 100,000 pesos from an indigenous woman trader.

But two incidents in the past - the murder of another Indian national (the older brother of the woman recently killed) two years ago and the ambush of a village chief several months ago, which are both unsolved to this date - are like pieces of a mysterious puzzle beginning to take shape. These murders are not acts of a serial killer; there are accompanying circumstances that points out to a handiwork of an organized crime syndicate.

Well, a town councilor from Solano was absolutely correct when he raised the question whether putting a meager 36,000 pesos budget for peace and order is still a moral act.

All these happen when an elected leadership is not in any way concerned even if such gruesome murders are going on. These officials are only good at paving roads, buying new heavy equipment and brand new SUVs purportedly for the use of the provincial government.

**My friend and colleague Floro Taguinod wrote a follow-up article which explains the connection between the gruesome murders going on this town.