“Let’s call a spade a spade,” lawyer Martin Delgra III, spokesperson of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP)-Davao City chapter, told a few reporters before the start of the Club 888 Forum at The Marco Polo, Davao last Wednesday. “Let’s call it the Ampatuan Massacre. There is no intention to drag the names of the accused, but it just so happened that it was committed in the town of Ampatuan in Maguindanao.”
He was, of course, referring to the name being used to refer to the November 23, 2009 murder of 57 people in Ampatuan, Maguindanao. The media (and almost everyone else) call it the “Maguindanao massacre,” but Delgra — and I guess the IBP — prefer to call it the “Ampatuan massacre.” I’ve also heard this argument from several people, notably Bobby Timonera of MindaNews who, in one Facebook entry, enjoined his friends:
“Everybody, let’s start calling it AMPATUAN MASSACRE, ok? After all, it happened in a place called Ampatuan in Maguindanao. We call it ‘Iligan bombing’ if something explodes in Iligan, righ? Not Lanao bombing.”
Nor, I may add, do we call the infamous “Lipa massacre” the “Batangas massacre,” or the “Antipolo massacre” the “Rizal massacre.”
“There is no intention to drag the names of the accused, but it just so happened that it was committed in the town of Ampatuan in Maguindanao,” Delgra tells reporters.
But I’m not so sure this applies to the massacre in Ampatuan, Maguindanao. It is one thing to be accurate about our labels, especially since Mindanao itself is victim to generalizations and stereotypes, quite another to affix a family’s name to the massacre and practically accuse them of it with each telling of the story. Because that is what most people, especially those unfamiliar with Maguindanao, will think when they read “Ampatuan massacre”: not knowing that there is such a town called Ampatuan, they will conclude that the name refers to the family.
I talked with my fellow editor about this and we at the Mindanao Daily Mirror will stick to “Maguindanao massacre.” But we also won’t edit out statements and interviews that refer to it as the “Ampatuan massacre.” As Mindanaoans, we certainly appreciate the desire to be accurate about the label. Calling it the “Maguindanao massacre” unfairly and unnecessarily drags the entire province into the mess. We feel the same way when so-called national media refer to Mindanao as “war-torn” and “lawless.”
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