DAVAO CITY

Davao militants learn lessons from Trillanes’s botched coup

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Dec 05, 2007

By CHERYLL D. FIEL | Davao Today

For the militants in Davao City, if there is one thing to learn from the botched coup at the Manila Peninsula Hotel led by Lt. Senior grade Antonio Trillanes IV and Brigadier General Danilo Lim, it should be this: “Banking on spontaneity is not enough.”

Poor and landless after 19 years of CARP

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Dec 01, 2007

By GRACE S. UDDIN | Davao Today

Jolito Divinagracia and Ranel Enoc are among the farmers in Tamugan, Calinan district, whose parents are beneficiaries of the government’s Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). But almost 20 years into the program, both their families are still having a hard time acquiring the land supposedly awarded to them.

The other story of Luisito Bustamante

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Nov 20, 2007

Tortured. Luisito Bustamante shows the burns on his neck and marks of the metal chain on his his feet which were used by his captors to bind him. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)

By GERMELINA A. LACORTE | Davao Today

Luisito Bustamante, 22, admitted during a court hearing that he was a member of the Communist New Peoples Army (NPA). He told the court that not even his fingertips was touched when he was in military captivity, belying any possibility of torture. But an hour after the hearing, Luisito told a different story. He showed his mother and friends the burn marks on his neck and back, the scars on his ankles that had been, days before, tied with wires.

Duterte says rape, not poverty, could be behind Mariannet’s suicide

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Nov 17, 2007

By CHERYLL D. FIEL | Davao Today

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte suspected the 12-year-old Mariannet Amper could have been raped, based on the findings bared by the medico legal officer who conducted the autopsy. The mayor, who ordered the girls body exhumed five days after burial, said it was possible that rape could have driven the girl to kill herself. He also said that its also possible that someone could have killed her.

Duterte backs decriminalization of libel; planning to help Adonis?

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Nov 16, 2007

By GERMELINA A. LACORTE | Davao Today

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte vowed to help the Davao broadcaster jailed for libel now that a full blown war has erupted between him and close administration ally Congressman Prospero Nograles over what people perceive as the first salvo of their fight for the 2010 elections.

Suicide of 12-year-old girl moves pastor to paint, child worker to compose verses

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Nov 15, 2007

“My Diary” by Pastor Jurie Jaime. (davaotoday.com photo by Cheryll D. Fiel)

By CHERYLL D. FIEL | Davao Today

The suicide of the 12-year-old girl has moved a pastor to paint; a childs advocacy group volunteer to write verses, and government and civil society group to press the government for more attention to childrens rights.

The night after he heard about the girls death from the television news, Pastor Jurie Jaime, of the United Christ of the Philippines (UCCP) in Tibungco, stayed up in his parsonage throughout the wee hours in the morning, crying and angrily splashing paint on his canvass.