Death of an Anti-Mining Activist: Impunity Lives On

By Bong S. Sarmiento in Koronadal with Alan Davis in Manila
Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project

KORONADAL CITY— Does the killing of anti-mining activist Eliezer ‘Boy’ Billanes highlight irregular links between some mining companies and the Philippine military – or was he killed by insurgents because it was feared he was about to be turned into a so-called military asset and informer?

Might it be he was slain for being a suspected communist agitator and therefore a potential enemy in the eyes of those who pursue and prosecute Oplan Bantay Laya 2?

Army spokesmen repeatedly state publicly how their rules of engagement and the law prohibit the targeting of unarmed non-combatants – but then privately claim that activists like Billanes belong to the insurgency’s so-called urban ‘white’ fronts which they insist are secretly directed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the National Democratic Front (NDF).

The New People’s Army (NPA) meantime charge the military with human rights abuses –but then break international humanitarian law themselves by abducting a 21-year-old store girl in Davao and threatening her with summary justice in front of so-called People’s Courts for being a ‘military spy.’

Will we ever know the truth and justice be served in the case of Billanes – or will his death and the claims and counter-claims surrounding it serve only to deepen mutual suspicion between the authorities and the army on one side and civil society, political opposition and the insurgency on the other?

Either way, it seems this latest killing in Central Mindanao only highlights the need for far more effective investigative mechanisms as a way to combat the ongoing climate of impunity that surrounds summary killings and underscores the wholly ineffective posturing of politicians. Some observers are already calling for prosecutors to be given powers to play a more active and investigative role along French magisterial lines. This however would require a serious commitment and change in the law.

Perhaps in these days of YouTube and the spread of viral videos, this climate will only be seriously challenged when a summary killing is safely captured and uploaded by a quick-witted witness using the technology now available on most mobile phones.

Whatever changes –if any happen – they will be too late for Billanes and so many others like him. Several activists have been gunned down in very similar circumstances in recent months in the Philippines with local human rights activists believing they are all being targeted as part of the military’s counter-insurgency campaign.

The accusations are strenuously denied by the military.

Billanes, 46, had been an activist all his adult life in South Cotabato and north Mindanao and while he wore many ‘different hats,’ he was best known as an anti-mining leader and head of the Anti-Development Aggression Coalition. He had only just come back from a meeting with locally billeted soldiers from the 27th Infantry Battalion to discuss his safety when he was gunned down on Osmena Street one block from the police station at around 4.30 p.m. on March 9.

He was shot once in the back of the neck by a pillion passenger on a Honda 200R sports motorcycle traveling against the one-way traffic.

Billanes had jokingly warned his wife of 21 years how he might not come back from a first planned meeting he had arranged with the local soldiers of Charlie Company the day before, on March 8.

“I’m afraid that if I will not come back, I will never see my beloved again,” Emelia, 43, recalled him saying from their small house in Barangay Mabini.

Threats

Yet neither she nor their eldest son Jean Karl recalled him telling of any threats made against him. Jean Karl who works in Subic Bay and was back in town for his father’s funeral was adamant: “We spoke on the phone [the last time before his killing] and he just asked how I was doing. He did not tell me of any threats.”

But in the days before his death, Billanes had become concerned for his safety according to his friend and fellow activist Emily Lopez, Central Mindanao head of the human rights group Karapatan.

“Boy disclosed to me several days before his killing that he had information the military was looking to take him out,” Lopez claimed.

“That’s why he sought a meeting with the soldiers stationed in his village to speak about his security concerns,” Lopez told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project. “He thought the military were after him and didn’t want the scenario wherein they would barge into his house and take him,” she said.

Billanes arranged a meeting with Lieutenant Eduardo Florentino of the 27th Infantry Battalion on March 8. The lieutenant however was subsequently called away to a meeting with his superiors at battalion headquarters in Tupi, a 30-minute ride from here and the meeting was rescheduled for the following day. He was shot dead several hours after that meeting went ahead.

Florentino confirmed in a radio interview that the second meeting with Billanes went ahead – but strenuously denied the army was in any way responsible for his killing. So too did his superior Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Santiago, commander of the 27th Infantry Battalion in Tupi. A local council member who claimed to be present at the meeting subsequently told us that they had discussed the issue of the activist’s environmental advocacy.

Lt. Col. Santiago told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project that the military did not know Billanes before his death. But he added: “After he was killed, we conducted a background check [on him] and learned that he has connections with several progressive groups. We suspect that he has links with the communist rebels.”

Santiago said the army is conducting further investigations, focusing on the possibility that Billanes “could have been ordered killed by fellow militant members” because of “an internal conflict” or by insurgents “because the victim had a meeting with a military company.”

The lieutenant colonel added that one possibility was that those behind the killing may have thought that Billanes had “revealed something to the army.”

His widow however dismisses all suggestions that her husband was linked in any way to the insurgency.

“It’s impossible,” she says. “He was active in the city and provincial government [as representative of the non-government sector] and also with the church. If you speak about the truth, does that always make you NPA?” she asked rhetorically.

Emelia Billanes has no doubts that her husband was killed because of his anti-mining campaigns. Her sentiments are shared by others including Bishop Dinualdo Gutierrez of the Diocese of Marbel who delivered the requiem mass for Billanes on March 23.

“Boy was a ‘prophet, a voice of God.’ He was killed because of his advocacy against mining…he’s a protector of the integrity of creation,” the bishop said in his homily.

“Boy is not just a ‘martyr’ of South Cotabato but the whole country. His death now forms a river blood of fallen righteous leaders that almost flows throughout the whole Philippine archipelago,” Bayan Muna (People First) party list Rep. Satur Ocampo said during the Luksang Parangal (tribute) for the victim here a few days earlier on March 21.

Ocampo claims that Billanes is the 991st activist to be killed since 2001 – a number that is disputed by the authorities.

Activist life

Billanes spent his entire adult life as an activist and worked in Northern Mindanao before coming back to South Cotabato to become a common figure in street rallies denouncing corruption in government, human rights violations and promoting the rights of farmers and the rural poor.

At the time of his death, he was chairman of the Campaign against Mining Movement.

He was also executive director of the Samahan ng Magsasaka sa Timug Kutabato; a trustee of the Coalition of Social Development Organization of South Cotabato; and an active member of the local government development committees of Koronadal and the province of South Cotabato. He was also a founding member of the South Cotabato People’s Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy.

In recent years Billanes became increasingly known for his campaigns against a large-scale mining project in neighboring Tampakan town which is run by Sagittarius Mines, Inc. (SMI). SMI is in turn largely owned by Xstrata Copper, a subsidiary of Swiss global mining giant Xstrata Plc. The area supposedly contains the largest undeveloped copper deposits in all of South East Asia and the Western Pacific.

During his funeral cortege which passed through the city’s main streets towards the family graveyard in Barangay San Jose, placards opposing SMI operations were held up along the route.

An estimated 3,000 people went along the funeral caravan as his casket was paraded in town on board a yellow government-owned dump truck.

SMI categorically denies any knowledge of the killing of Billanes.

In a statement dated March 17, Mark Williams of SMI expressed the company’s sympathy and condolences to his family. At the same time, it insisted: “SMI wishes to confirm that the company has no connection to the death of Mr. Billanes. Any allegations linking SMI to this incident are totally untrue and without any basis in fact,” the British executive said.

“As many in the communities associated with the Tampakan mining project will attest, SMI has always respected and will continue to respect human rights and the rights of stakeholders to express their views,” he added.

Williams pointed out that his company had reached out to Billanes and his various through forums to listen to his opinions and concerns.

Karapatan regional head Lopez claims however that on at least two separate occasions in 2004 and 2007, Billanes told her that somebody claiming to be from the National Security Council and using the name “Raymond Guevarra” asked Billanes to stop his advocacy against local mining projects. She believes the name is probably an alias and claims the same man sent her a threatening text message.

“You mentioned my name during the NBI [National Bureau of Investigation] probe [in relation to the killing of Billanes],” she insists it said. “I have a friend in the NBI. I know you but you do not know me.”

The Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project was unable to track down anybody with the name Raymond Guevarra working for the authorities.

Attorney Ferdinand Balduman, senior agent of the NBI in South Cotabato-Sarangani-General Santos City (Socsargen) area and in-charge of the Billanes case says the name is not known to him.

“I don’t know this animal Guevarra. In our conversation with Emily [Lopez], she might have mentioned Guevarra but it did not enter my mind then. This guy is trying to mess up our investigation and I hope that Emily will talk with us again. Karapatan will be helpful in our investigation,” Balduman told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project.

Balduman said the NBI “has a group it suspects to be behind the killing of Billanes but declines to identify it so as not to jeopardize the ongoing investigation.

“The group we are suspecting is just near the area,” he said without elaboration.

Attorney Dante Bonoan, NBI-Socsargen chief, said he believes the killing of Billanes was well-planned. According to him NBI headquarters has ordered its local agents to speed up their probe.

“The killers were not ordinary but professional ones,” Bonoan said in a separate interview.

Bonoan said the motive that Billanes was killed because of his anti-mining stance is being considered.

Task Force Billanes

The local police are also conducting its own probe and have set up Task Force Billanes.

Senior Supt. Robert Kiunisala, South Cotabato police chief, said the task force is still facing a blank wall as to the identities of the killers and the masterminds.

Kiunisala too said investigations are focused on the angle that Billanes might have been killed because of his resistance to the mining project.

Police are trying to follow up reports that Billanes was offered “PhP 300,000 to one million pesos” (USD 6,250 to 20,833) to stop his anti-mining crusade.

Kiunisala also appealed to colleagues of Billanes, the Church and local media to provide the task force with any information that could lead to arrest of both perpetrators and those who might have ordered the killing.

With the authorities’ efforts to build up a case against the perpetrators still in the dark, Karapatan’s Lopez said that justice can still be served to Billanes if SMI abandons its mining project which has become a flashpoint between the military and the NPA.

John Arnaldo, SMI’s corporate communications manager, said the military presence in the mining site follows on from the host communities’ and local governments’ joint resolutions requesting military and police protection from insurgent attacks “which sowed fear and distrust among the communities, and hampered development activities in the area.”

On January 1 last year NPA rebels raided the base camp of SMI in Barangay Tablu, Tampakan and burned down equipment worth PhP 12 million (USD 250,000). The rebels also attacked a nearby military detachment. On January 29 this year, the communist guerillas also attacked the police station of Tampakan, wounding four people, including three policemen, “for being the protectors of SMI.”

The army has set up Task Force Kitaco for security purposes around the mining site and the towns of Kiblawan, Tampakan and Columbio. SMI funds a variety of local development projects in the towns.

But Arnaldo denies the military’s security measure is intentionally to protect the SMI mines.

“As SMI understands, Task Force Kitaco was organized in response to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s directive to improve security in the area,” the mining official said via e-mail.

He also categorically denied rumors circulating among some activist groups that retired Major General Jovito Palparan serves as the security consultant of the company.

Palparan has been widely accused of substantial human rights abuses during his command of infantry battalions in southern and central Luzon and eastern Visayas. He denies the claims. Recent attempts by the government to reappoint him to a position of power within the Dangerous Drugs Board however are believed to have been quietly dropped because of diplomatic and international pressure.

In retirement, Palparan has remained a controversial figure and was widely criticized for leading a unit of soldiers from the 24th Infantry Battalion in their take over of a mine in Zambales – an incident condemned by senior military commanders.

More likely than not, it is probably just another rumor sown and left to root given established facts in cases like these are so few and far between. As competing groups trade claim and counter claim, Emelia Billanes and her three children are left like so many other families wanting answers and all those responsible caught.

As they served up spaghetti to “celebrate” the college graduation of daughter Maria Lorena days after the burial, Mrs. Billanes pointed to her youngest son Jean Mikhail. Just four years old, he was still waiting for his father to come home. Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project