Media offensive vs Sayyaf launched

Two soldiers are tied and stripped of their fatigues. One is asked to recite "The Lord’s Prayer" and made to kneel before a shallow gorge. A stroke of a machete and he is beheaded. Two more strokes and the other soldier is also decapitated.

Such macabre scenes were featured on national television starting Monday night, courtesy of a government that wants to bring home to the public the horror of the atrocities committed by Islamic extremists in Mindanao.

For certain quarters, however, it was too much reality TV. And at least one group called the graphic scenes "sheer pornography."

The release of the video showing the Abu Sayyaf beheading captured government troops in 1995 has upset senators and the left, but Malacañang said it is to ensure the bandits are routed not only in the battlefield but also before the bar of public opinion.

President Arroyo has given the go-signal for the government information machinery to launch its media campaign to justify her administration’s decision to use the annual "Balikatan" military exercises with the United States to wipe out the Abu Sayyaf.

"The people have the right to know the truth," the President said, adding the enemy should be able to take whatever they dish out.

Mrs. Arroyo has authorized the Armed Forces in cooperation with the Office of the Press Secretary to wage the government’s war against the Abu Sayyaf in the information arena.

Press Undersecretary Roberto Capco said the campaign was meant to show the brutality of the Islamists who customarily behead their kidnap victims as well as police and military troopers they capture.

"She agreed to show it (video footage) to the public to show how brutal these criminals are," Capco told Palace reporters.

The decision to show the graphic video was the AFP’s, Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao said.

"The AFP decided to tell you what they think you should know and whatever the downside to this, we hope that it will be informative in telling our people what kind of enemies we are facing," Tiglao said.

Mrs. Arroyo said: "These decisions are done not at my level. But I’m not objecting to it." She admitted that she herself has not seen the tape because this was an "operational matter."

The release of the video was not meant to solicit more support for Balikatan, she said, but was merely to affirm that government was doing the right thing in allowing the joint exercises to track down the rebels.

But three senators cautioned media outfits yesterday against the showing of the video footage of an Abu Sayyaf member beheading a Filipino soldier, saying it might offend the sensibilities of some people.

The political left also scored the sensationalist video and branded it as "sheer pornography."

Senators Rodolfo Biazon and Francis Pangilinan said if Malacañang’s intention was to gain support for the government’s drive against the Muslim bandits, including the ongoing Balikatan 02-1, then the video footage was out of bounds.

Senate President Pro Tempore Manuel Villar Jr. stressed it was alright to let the public know about the activities of the Abu Sayyaf but there should have been appropriate warning and editing before the video was shown.

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) spokesman Renato Reyes Jr. said Filipinos do not need to be convinced that the Abu Sayyaf are utterly despicable and should be wiped out completely.

"We are however unconvinced as to why 6,000 Filipino troops could not crush 100 bandits holed up in the jungles of Basilan," he said.

Last Saturday, Mrs. Arroyo had as guests in her radio/TV program broadcast live from Dumaguete City four former kidnap victims of the rebels, one of whom lost her arm during a rescue operation.

The four categorically expressed their full support for the Balikatan exercise, which is meant to use the Abu Sayyaf as live targets, so that the group’s reign of terror in Basilan will come to an end.

Capco released to local TV stations last Monday night the video footage supposedly taken by the bandits showing how they decapitate the soldiers they captured.

"The tapes were really abominable. These Abu Sayyaf are different kind of people. They were really beastly in their acts," he deplored.

Capco said government authorities have reason to believe the Abu Sayyaf filmed their own heinous acts in order to solicit financial aid from international terror organizations like al-Qaeda of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

He said evidence points to a link between Abu Sayyaf and al-Qaeda, mentioning in particular the case of Ramzi Youseff, who was behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center, but had been apprehended in Manila in January 1995.

‘Overkill’

Biazon however said the media blitz against the Abu Sayyaf was a bad case of overkill.

"The overwhelming support of the public (for Balikatan) is already there. It (showing of video footage) has, however, succeeded in assaulting the sensibilities of a lot of people, more importantly, the children," he said.

Biazon noted that even his 10-year-old grandson caught a glimpse of the video while waiting to go to school yesterday morning, and was apparently traumatized.

He disclosed that his wife Monserrat, who sat as member of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board for 13 years, said the board has no authority to curtail newscasts.

Pangilinan, on the other hand, said: "I think it is alright to show the video as long as there is sufficient warning as to the graphic nature of the video and that (it) is edited to put to a minimum the violent and bloody scenes."

He added that there "should be a balance between freedom and the values we espouse, such as responsible journalism and good taste."

The two-hour tape, shown to some 50 foreign and local journalists at Camp Aguinaldo, consisted of actual footage of beheadings and a series of encounters between elements of the 44th Infantry Battalion and Abu Sayyaf gunmen in January 1995 in the jungles of Barangay Kapayawan in Isabela, Basilan.

The tape was recovered by government troops in an encounter in Basilan last year, Armed Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said.

The video showing the bandit group interrogating the two soldiers had other scenes that were just as graphic.

Capco said the footage was recovered by the AFP after they overran an Abu Sayyaf camp in Basilan. It was dated 1999, before the group’s round of kidnapping sprees.

Palace reporters however confronted Capco yesterday by pointing out that the footage showed not the Abu Sayyaf but rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The reporters recalled that the video was the same one used by then President Joseph Estrada to fuel his war against the MILF and which was screened to Catholic bishops to justify the all-out campaign against the secessionist rebels.

But whether the footage showed MILF or Abu Sayyaf, critics of the joint war games blasted the propaganda blitz.

"Sheer pornography!" was how outspoken UP parish priest Robert Reyes of the coalition PEACE CAMP described the video.

Datu Ansari Alonto of Maradeka said Mrs. Arroyo’s decision to air the video is dangerous because it plays on historical prejudices against the Muslims in the Philippines.

Sanlakas legal counsel JV Bautista said it was "tasteless and redundant."

Task Force Detainees of the Philippines head Dr. Aurora Parong said the violence caught on video would only beget more violence.

Bayan said the "war propaganda harps on public outrage against the Abu Sayyaf in order to justify government’s outrageous policy of allowing the return of US troops and bases to the country."

Parong said the government should perhaps also show to the public how American troops shot Aetas like wild boars when they still maintained military bases in Clark and Subic.

Sanlakas president Wilson Fortaleza said the public would greatly benefit if they would be allowed to see the film "Memories of a Forgotten War," a 45-minute documentary by Sari Dalena and Camilla Benolirao Griggers on young Filipino expatriates retracing the roots of their alienation by investigating the horrors of the Filipino-American war.

Sanlakas sponsored the documentary show last night at the Pelikula at Lipunan series at the SM Megamall in Mandaluyong City. "This should all remind us of what horrors the Americans were and and are capable of doing," Fortaleza said. "We should not forget the lessons of history." — Marichu Villanueva, Paolo Romero, Aurea Calica, Romel Bagares