Latest News

SideCrash: Davao?s Newest Rock Sensation

SideCrash (contributed photo)DAVAO CITY ? SideCrash is the next alternative rock band to watch out for in Davao City. Not because their manager is the popular TV anchor/reporter Aljo Bendijo, formerly of ABS-CBN?s TV Patrol. And not because they are composed of five good-looking young guys, but because they are truly a very talented, exciting and very promising new band.

They were discovered by their producer Rolly Guinares of Awiting Pinoy Records, who is also a fellow Davaoeno based in Manila, just like his former high school classmate Bendijo.

SideCrash Band is composed of lead singer/rhythm guitar Bermin ?Berms? Gaya, 21; lead guitarist Ronnie ?Balong? Binag, 22; drummer Nico Vincent Lopez, 21; keyboards player Ian Wendell Sison, 22; and bass player Byron Contemplo, 27.

(more…)

Continue ReadingSideCrash: Davao?s Newest Rock Sensation

Activist Youth Snatched, Interrogated Inside Van

By Cheryll D. Fiel
davaotoday.com

DAVAO CITY ? A young activist was forcibly taken Friday night by men believed to be government agents and was interrogated inside a van for an hour.

Raunil Mortejo, chairman of the progressive youth group Anakbayan in Davao City, said he had just stepped out of his office in Juna Subdivision, Matina, Friday evening when unidentified men forced him inside a blue Nissan Urvan with tinted windows and covered license plates.

The van parked in a dimly lit portion of Acacia Street a few blocks from the Anakbayan office. There, Mortejo said, the men interrogated him and asked him about the people who frequent the office, which Anakbayan shares with Bayan. They also asked him about the activities of the people inside the office and what campaigns Bayan was planning.

(more…)

Continue ReadingActivist Youth Snatched, Interrogated Inside Van

2 More Paquibato Residents Killed as Bandits Continue Rampage

By Cheryll D. Fiel
davaotoday.com

DAVAO CITY — Two more residents in Paquibato were killed last week, the latest in the spate of killings in the hinterland district allegedly perpetrated by a bandit group that has ties to the military.

The victims, who came from different areas in Malabog, a village in Paquibato, had been stabbed; one of them, a 25-year-old man identified only as Luciano, was slashed in the neck. The other victim, Reynaldo Ca?ete, 35, also lost his carabao to the killers.

Generoso Baon, an official of Malabog, told the GMA-7 news program Testigo that the bandits had been running amok after Mayor Rodrigo Duterte announced a bounty for their capture.

(more…)

Continue Reading2 More Paquibato Residents Killed as Bandits Continue Rampage

38 Years Later, Jabidah Still Haunts a Persecuted People

Thirty-eight years ago, the Marcos military murdered dozens of Moro men in a carnage that sparked the Islamic rebellion in the Philippines. The anguish and the outrage remain to this day.

Related story: The Songs of Jabidah?

By Cheryll D. Fiel
davaotoday.com

DAVAO CITY ? Almost four decades later, the anguish and the thirst for justice remained.

Today, March 18, the country?s Moros commemorate the killing by the Philippine military of 28 Moro men on the island of Corregidor 38 years ago, in a carnage that has come to be known as the Jabidah Massacre.

The men had been trained by the dictator Marcos to take part in his plot, called Operation Merdeka, to invade Sabah, a state on the northern part of Malaysia, just south of the Philippines. According to various accounts, when the men found out about Merdeka, they refused to participate and were promptly slain by the military. Several of the men were not accounted for and are presumed dead.

One man, Jirin Arula, survived the slaughter, however, and went on to expose the massacre, which subsequently fueled the rebellion led by Nur Misuari, founding chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front. To this day, the fire ignited by the massacre still burns, according to Moro leaders.

The massacre, according to the IQRAA Islam Foundation, which held a rally here on Friday to commemorate the incident, “ignited the flame of the Bangsamoro people’s legitimate struggle for their right to self-determination.”
(more…)

Continue Reading38 Years Later, Jabidah Still Haunts a Persecuted People