Life in a Pattern
For years, Edil Gonzaga, spokesperson for Southern Mindanao of the transport group Transmission, has been used to being followed around he can already spot his pursuers faster than they can see him. He was aware that on May 12, during the transport strike that paralyzed Davao City, Celso had been followed by suspicious men. I knew because I saw some of them pretending to join (the transport strike), he recalls. But I can tell that they don’t belong. They kept an eye on him (Celso).
Dr. Rogelio Peera, the epidemiologist killed in Davao city on June 24. Friends remember him as a doctor for the poor. (davaotoday.com photo by Barry Ohaylan)
Friends had kept a close watch on Celso that day, making sure he was never left alone. I had the feeling that he was really targeted to get killed that day, Gonzaga said. (Celso’s brother, however, said Pojas also received text they were going to kill him on the feast day of the peasants, which was more accurate. Pojas was killed on May 15, the feast of Davao citys barangay Ma-a, whose patron saint, San Isidro, is the patron saint of peasants.)
Gonzaga, however, remembers that Pojas did something that he would never do. He fell into a pattern, he said, shaking his head. He had this habit of taking cigarettes with his coffee. Then, he always run out and had to run to the store in the morning. Gonzaga pointed out that failure to break his pattern made his friend an easy target for his killers. He was still texting Pojas the evening before he died.
The KMP staffs, who had kept that office for seven years, also noticed strangers on motorcycles hanging around the neighboring stores even months before the killing.
Just before Pojas was killed, they also noticed a group of high school kids, sticking their camera phones on the adjacent wall from the videoke store where they hang around. Sometimes, they position the camera phone on the gate to see who is coming in and out. I knew it because I once arrived at the gate, I happened to turn around and caught them in the act, said the KMP officemate who declined to reveal his name because of threats to his life.
Neighboring storeowners had told friends theyre under surveillance. A storeowner had once remarked, Is that an office? Why is it under surveillance? said a staff of the Solidarity Action Group for Indigenous Peoples (Sagip) also close to Pojas.
Pojas was killed on May 15, last year. A year after his killing, in May this year, Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo leaked to the media what he called a military Order of Battle list containing the names of persons and groups allegedly linked to the Communist New Peoples Army. Ocampo said the OB list was leaked to him by a conscientious soldier. Pojas name was on that list, and so, were the names of over a hundred activists and organizations. In the last two months, two more activists who belonged to the groups identified in that list were killed. (NEXT: Why worry about the OB List?)
Extrajudicial Killings
