Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo expects arrests in the massacre of at least 57 unarmed civilians in the next 24 hours, a spokesman said Wednesday.
“The president … is enraged by these barbaric acts,” spokesman Cerge Remonde said. “She has literally thrown the full force of the law and has mobilized the security and police forces of the state to go after the perpetrators. We are expecting arrests and prosecution in the next 24 hours.”
Authorities have disbanded a paramilitary force in the southern Philippines suspected of having a role in Monday’s massacre, the country’s state-run media reported. Remonde could not say how many arrests were expected But he said the deaths were the result of a political clan war, not Muslim secessionism in a troubled region.
“So far as this case is concerned, this is a limited clan political rivalry which has been going on for some time now,” Remonde said.
The death toll grew Wednesday after 11 more bodies were recovered from a rural area of Mindanao, where the remains were hastily buried. Arroyo has declared Wednesday a national day of mourning. The Philippine government is under intense pressure to find the culprits responsible for planning and carrying out the abduction and killings of politicians, lawyers, journalists and reportedly some bystanders. Suspicion has fallen on the Ampatuan family, a key ally of the Arroyo administration in the Maguindanao region of the southern Mindanao province.
Remonde appeared to blame the Ampatuan clan, adding: “There is, however, a move now by the administration party to expel the suspected clan.” Those killed include the wife and two sisters of a politician who plans to run for the spot vacated next year by Maguindanao’s governor, Andal Ampatuan.
The investigation is ongoing, but a spokesman for the country’s national police said the governor’s son, Andal Ampatuan Jr., a local mayor, has been linked to the crime, according to media reports.
“According to the initial reports, those who were abducted and murdered at Saniag were initially stopped by a group led by the mayor of Datu Unsay [Andal Ampatuan Jr.],” National Police spokesman Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina said, according to ABS-CBN News.
Neither the governor nor of his any advisers has commented on the allegations. The massacre is the worst politically motivated violence in recent Philippine history. On Monday morning, about 100 gunmen stopped a convoy carrying supporters and family members of politician Ismael “Toto” Mangudadatu, witnesses and officials said.
Mangudadatu had sent his wife and sisters to file paperwork allowing him to run for governor of Maguindanao in May after he faced threats if he filed papers himself. He said the threats came from the governor’s allies. One car traveling behind the convoy was mistaken for being a part of the politician’s contingent, a local official told the Philippines GMA News Network. The car was heading to a hospital, according to Tom Robles, head of the Tacurong City Employees Union, who spoke to GMA News.
The driver and four passengers — including a government employee, who had suffered a mild stroke, and his wife — were rounded up and killed along with the convoy ahead of them, Robles said. A police official confirmed that the car and bodies of three passengers were among those recovered at the grave site, GMA reported.
At least 12 journalists were among the victims, according to the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders, making Monday the deadliest single day for journalists anywhere in the world. Both the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans have agreed to participate in the government’s investigation, according to Arroyo’s adviser on the Mindanao region, Jesus Dureza, who spoke to the Philippine media Tuesday.
The region is bracing for a backlash of possible reprisal killings. The government has placed Maguindanao and its surrounding regions under a state of emergency, and survivors of massacre have entered a government witness-protection program, according to the state-run Philippines News Agency.
Arroyo has sent officials to Maguindanao to “oversee military action against the perpetrators of the dastardly acts,” she said Tuesday. “No effort has been spared to bring justice to the victims and hold the perpetrators accountable to the full limit of the law,” she said.
Long-running family disputes in the southern Philippines have spilled blood before. Such blood feuds are known by the indigenous term “rido.” But Monday’s massacre has broader implications, Philippine analyst Kenneth E. Bauzon said.
“I think that this is a culmination for many years of impunity on the part of any family — or group, for that matter — because this has been tolerated by the Arroyo administration,” said Bauzon, a political science associate professor at St. Joseph’s College in New York. He’s from Mindanao and has authored books on the region and its politics.
“So when the administration looks the other way when journalists report on military abuses [or] when the administration looks the other way when church workers are assassinated, when environmental workers are assassinated or abducted, you know, this [massacre] is just one or two steps away” from that.
The killings could further damage the political reputation of Arroyo, whose administration has been scarred by allegations of a tainted election in 2004 and criticism over her response to recent typhoons. “It’s a test as to what how far the Arroyo administration will go to arrest and prosecute the perpetrators,” Bauzon said.
Arroyo’s term ends in May, and she cannot seek re-election, but there has been speculation she could seek another political office. Maguindanao is part of an autonomous region in predominantly Muslim Mindanao, which was set up in the 1990s to quell armed uprisings seeking an independent Muslim homeland in the Philippines, a predominantly Christian country.
Negotiations between one of those armed groups, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and the Philippine government broke down last year after the country’s Supreme Court blocked a proposed peace deal that would have increased the size and scope of the autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao.
Arroyo’s government exercises little control in the region, and critics blamed her for helping legitimize many of the armed groups that operate freely in Mindanao.
