Hitchhiking Adventures
Protest Punk. One of the Sagada 11 inside the police provincial jail. (photo by Ariston Valle)
From Davao, Alonzos group traveled for five days in a series of hitchhiking adventures, passing through Surigao and Leyte. They hitched rides on trucks and barges. “We talked to whoever was in charge of the barges to let us hitch a ride,” he told davaotoday.com recently. “We brought sleeping bags and ate leftovers from restaurants.”
With only 100 pesos in his pocket given by his grandmother, Alonzo and his group arrived in Tarlac in February, in time to watch the punk concert. They had a good time, he said.
After the concert, the group decided to go to Baguio for the Panagbenga Festival. But the festival was two weeks ahead, so the group decided instead to go to Sagada, a popular destination among tourists and backpackers.
At around noon on Feb. 14, in the town of Buguias, policemen stopped the truck the group was hitchhiking on. “They told us to come down. They were shouting, You sons of bitches! You are NPAs!” Alonzo recalled. “We were all shocked. They pointed their guns at us.”
They came down from the truck and were forced to lie down. “I was kicked in the back because I did not follow orders right away,” Alonzo said. “I was asking questions at first.”
They were then blindfolded and handcuffed and were forced to walk toward Camp Molintas, an army camp nearby, all the while the policemen kept accusing them of being members of the NPA.
At the camp, they were made to kneel under the hot sun for three hours. There was no way to contact their parents because their belongings, including their cellular phones, had been seized.
Soldiers started asking why they were in the area but refused to believe the youths story even if they showed their identification cards. Later, their blindfolds were removed but their hands remained tied. They were shoved into a room and made to stand there for the whole night.
