Massacre, martial law, beheading, kidnapping, hostage-taking. Not to mention not one but two multi-million-peso drug busts and, just the other day, a jailbreak that left two people dead. In my Facebook status the other day, I said, “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?”
That, of course, is a shout-out of sorts both to those who are conspiring against Mindanao and to those who believe there is a conspiracy in the first place. But really, it’s completely understandable that conspiracy theories would abound these days. The aforementioned incidents never happen in civilized society, but they occurred in rapid succession in various places in Mindanao in the span of three weeks. Let me repeat them, just to add to our sense of incredulity: Massacre, martial law, beheading, hostage-taking, kidnapping, two multi-million-peso drug busts, and a deadly jailbreak.
And so once again Mindanao is labeled a “lawless” and war-torn island. Conspiracy theorists claim these occurrences are related to each other, and they ask: is Mindanao being plunged into darkness (both figuratively and literally: did I mention that there is a looming electricity crisis that had been warned about for years but no one in government did anything about?) so that the island could be used as a pretext for a sinister grand scheme to perpetuate some people in power?
A number of groups and individuals have been asking this question practically from the time the gruesome Maguindanao massacre was committed. At the time the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was being scored for being too slow to arrest the prime suspects — members of the powerful Ampatuan clan — allegedly because the two parties were cooking up something to allow the clan to go scot-free while giving government the illusion of having served up justice for the victims and their families.
The events that followed seemed to confirm that: prime suspect Andal Ampatuan Jr. turned himself in a full four days after the massacre, two days after receiving a “visit” from Presidential Adviser on Mindanao Jesus Dureza. Soon after that several large caches of firearms and ammunition were dug up in the homes of clan members in Maguindanao. Reports also became rife — from government sources, we have to note — that armed supporters of the Ampatuans were massing in several areas in the province. All of a sudden, what had been a relatively simple (if such an adjective may be used to describe such inhumanity) case of mass murder became a rebellion. The suspects were no longer just murderers, they were now rebels.
In one blogger’s words, this was a case in which a massacre was convenient: while no one thinks the murder of 57 people were government’s doing (at least not directly), it was an opportunity to stir things up and end up with a rebellion that could be a convenient excuse for declaring martial law. And as things have turned out, martial law was declared, and while it was lifted a week later, the question still remains: now that a precedent has been set, and with Congress not being able to review it, and with things in Mindanao still in flux, will it be declared again, this time with greater strength and scope?
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