COTABATO CITY, Philippines - With a new lease of life from his supposed enemies, this year’s yuletide season could be the best for communist rebel Renante Dalon, who is being treated for serious combat injuries at an Army hospital in Maguindanao.
He was rescued by soldiers after having been abandoned by fleeing comrades during an encounter in North Cotabato’s Magpet town two weeks ago.
“I just stared at the soldiers that milled around me as a lay down, bleeding profusely, waiting for them to finish me off. They did not. They carried me to a safe place, gave me first aid and evacuated me to the Camp Siongco Hospital using a helicopter,” Delon tearfully told The Star as he narrated in the Visayan dialect his near brush with death during a fierce encounter in Magpet last month.
Delon was finance officer of their group, comprised of more than 200 guerillas that belong to the New People's Army’s notorious Front 74, which is feared for its brutality on communities perceived to be sympathetic to the military, or reluctant to shell out “protection money” on a regular basis.
Dalon wept when officials of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, led by 6th ID chief Major Gen. Caesar Ronnie Ordoyo and the commanding general of the Philippine Army, Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Bautista, offered to him, as “peace gesture” groceries and other provisions packed in red shiny cellophane with a ribbon last Tuesday right at his sickbed.
Dalon is still recuperating from serious bullet wounds in his both legs he sustained when their enclave was overran by combined combatants of the elite Scout Rangers and Special Forces, the Army’s 57th, 40th and 57th IB, that launched anti-NPA operations in Magpet in the middle of November due to mounting complaints of extortion and harassments of farmers that refuse to pay taxes to the group.
Dalon, armed with an AK-47 Kalashnikov, was abandoned by his comrades when they saw him and another companion named Ka Nikoy fell as they fought soldiers advancing toward their hilltop position.
“They did not even bother to carry me and Nikoy as they fled. Nikoy died even before soldiers could reach our position,” Dalon said.
Dalon said life in the NPA was difficult.
“We don’t have food and medicines even for common ailments such as dysentery and pain relievers for headaches and stomach discomfort,” he said.
Dalon said most of his comrades are hardliners, apparently deeply indoctrinated to become resilient and emboldened - on alleged “abuses” by government against poor Filipinos in the countryside.
“I hope they will change for good,” he said.
Dalon, who is of Bilaan descent, hails from Magsaysay town in Davao del Sur. He said he was recruited into the NPA in 1993 while working at the Fortuna Paper Mills in Valenzuela City in Metro Manila.
“Then I went home to Davao del Sur and joined a group of the NPAs operating at the North Cotabato-Davao del Sur boundary,” he said.
Dalon is worried of his safety once discharged from the Camp Siongco Hospital. He said he is certain his having sought refuge in a military hospital will spark the ire of his comrades.
“I will never return to my group. My comrades will surely execute me,” he said, adding that he is just as apprehensive of the security of relatives visiting him at Camp Siongco Hospital.
Dalon was airlifted from Magpet to the Camp Siongco Hospital on recommendation of Col. Ademar Tomaro, commander of the 602nd Brigade, which has jurisdiction over Army units trying to flush NPAs out of Magpet and surrounding towns.
“It was a providential chance for us to show to the NPAs that we have an Armed Forces that value the lives of Filipinos regardless of whether they are enemies of the state or not. We are all Filipinos. We may have different ideologies, but are all Filipinos,” said
Tomaro, an Ilonggo who graduated from the Philippine Military Academy in 1982.
Tomaro even asked the NPAs in Magpet to coordinate with the town’s local officials if they wish to evacuate to hospitals other companions wounded in encounters that led to the military’s liberation from rebel occupation of more than a dozen guerilla enclaves in the area in the past three weeks.
Dalon said he may either go into hiding after recuperation, or start life anew and help in the religious activities of her two sisters, Gertrudes Dalon-Layan, and Girlie Dalon, both preachers of a local Christian sect in Davao del Sur.