More than three years after 57 people were killed in election-related violence, the operator of the excavator used to bury the victims speaks to a Philippines’ news station
BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The man who operated the excavator that buried the victims of the worst election-related violence in Philippines history has disclosed how the politically powerful Ampatuan clan ordered him to carry out the act in an exclusive interview with the Philippines’ GMA News.
On the morning of Nov. 23, 2009, a group of people including 31 reporters accompanied the family of Esmael Mangudadatu, a rival of the Ampatuans, to witness the filing of his election papers for the forthcoming gubernatorial election in Maguindanao, a province on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
The convoy was attacked, leaving 57 dead in a massacre described by the International Crisis Group as “one of the worst acts of political violence in modern Philippine history, and the largest number of journalists slain on a single day ever, anywhere in the world.”
About 100 armed men ambushed the convoy of vehicles on a lonely stretch of highway and drove them to the top of a hill before killing them all. Several women were raped before they were killed.
Andal Ampatuan Sr., the patriarch whose family ruled poor and troubled southern Maguindanao for nearly a decade and has close ties to former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was charged with murder in February 2010, along with 196 others including his relatives, soldiers, police officers and members of a civilian militia.
MASS BURIAL
Bong Andal, arrested last November, told GMA News he arrived with his excavator after the killings to find a crime scene littered with bodies and a son of Ampatuan Sr. at the scene.
According to GMA, he described using “his machine's large steel hand to drag bloodied bodies into freshly dug pits and crush vehicles with some of the dead still inside”.
Andal said the Ampatuans threatened to kill his family if he got caught and in a written affidavit, he said Ampatuan Sr. called him prior to the massacre to ask if the backhoe was in good condition, GMA added.
Andal, who fled the site after he heard a helicopter approaching, has asked the government to put him under the witness protection programme.
Rights groups say about 100 of the 196 people charged are still at large, and bail proceedings have dominated the trial for the past two years, frustrating the family members of victims.
Meanwhile, at least three witnesses have been murdered and others talk of intimidation and threats by the still powerful Ampatuan clan.
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