Philippine Troops Kill 12 Protesters : 94 Wounded in Leftist Peasant March on Palace; Rebels Halt Peace Talks

Government soldiers opened fire on thousands of leftist peasant demonstrators as they approached the presidential palace Thursday, killing at least 12 of them and wounding 94. It was the worst incident of violence in Manila since President Corazon Aquino took power 11 months ago.

Within hours of the shooting, Communist rebels suspended peace talks aimed at ending their 18-year insurgency. They described Thursday’s shooting incident as “part of a pattern of military action” aimed at destroying their movement and destabilizing the nation.

The military accused the political left of provoking the shootings in an effort to destabilize the government 10 days before a national referendum on a new constitution that the Communists have rejected.

Aquino Shocked, Saddened

Aquino said in a midnight statement on government television that she was shocked and saddened by the killings. She appointed a special committee to investigate the incident and prosecute those responsible.

After a three-hour meeting with her military leaders Thursday night, Aquino said she expects her opponents to exploit the incident in an effort to defeat the new constitution.

“Attempts to destabilize the government and defeat our democratic aims will intensify,” she said. “We are prepared for this contingency. We shall have law and order throughout our land.”

The shooting, which threatened to plunge Aquino’s young government into its worst crisis yet, began after 10,000 members of the highly organized Movement of Filipino Farmers marched toward Malacanang Palace to demand an equitable distribution of farmland and food for the poor.

1,000 Soldiers, Troops

Aquino, who rose to power on a wave of similar street protests and marches on Malacanang when it was occupied by Ferdinand E. Marcos, has yet to meet with the group, despite several attempts by the peasants since last September.

More than 1,000 soldiers and riot troops met the demonstrators at a bridge about 300 yards from the palace gates. Several hundred demonstrators, some carrying sticks, immediately began pushing through the first police lines. Rocks were thrown.

Suddenly the soldiers opened fire.

Several riot policemen were seen shooting in the air. But according to eyewitness accounts and videotapes, many soldiers fired rifles and pistols directly into the crowd.

Most Shot in Head

Most of those killed were shot in the head. Some soldiers continued to fire at the demonstrators as they tried to carry away the dead and wounded.

The gunfire lasted nearly a minute. When it ended, the street was stained with blood and littered with hundreds of shoes and sandals left behind by the fleeing protesters.

A sign, splattered with blood and left behind, urged: “Stop Militarization in the Countryside.”

The demonstrators apparently carried no firearms. But reporters saw among the marchers several people who are members of the Communist New People’s Army, the militant insurgent force, and the leaders of the demonstration had cautioned reporters covering the event that they planned to push through the police lines without first conducting a “dialogue,” as has been the practice in all other recent marches on the palace.

“She must remove the barricades,” peasant leader Jaime Tadeo said of the president in an interview moments before his group marched on the palace, “or else blood will flow.”

Gen. Ramon Montano, police chief of metropolitan Manila, said in an interview moments after the shooting: “I think this is the beginning of the end. They (the left) have been building up to this. They just want to provoke us to react, maybe inflict casualties on them so they can scream ‘police brutality.’ I think they have succeeded.”

Police Chief Suspended

Aquino announced in her midnight statement that she has accepted a request by Montano that he be suspended until the investigation is completed.

Montano was asked whether his riot troops had panicked and overreacted when the demonstrators began jostling them, and he replied: “I don’t know. It’s possible. Our response is graduated, usually. This time we were caught flat-footed.”

Montano said his men did not use tear gas or water cannon before opening fire because the demonstrators were already too close, but he could not explain why the soldiers failed to use six-foot barbed-wire barricades, as in the past. The barricades would have prevented the marchers from reaching the police lines.

“It was only a self-defensive action here,” Montano said. “But this is all under investigation. Let’s wait and see.”

The armed forces general headquarters, in a statement released today, blamed the incident on “lack of dialogue” between the protesters and the troops. “It was further observed that the peacekeeping forces overreacted to the situation,” the statement said.

Thursday was the first time Aquino’s government has opened fire on street protesters. In interviews months ago, several senior military commanders condemned the practice by Aquino’s presidential guards of meeting demonstrators with a show of armed force.

‘Must Meet These People’

“These people in the government now must remember how they got there,” one high-ranking general said. “They got there by using the streets. Now, they must meet these people in the streets, not with soldiers and rifles but in person.”

Asked why there was such a massive and heavily armed troop presence outside the palace Thursday, Montano said he had ordered it because, in the last peasant protest, “there were 35,000 of them, and they wanted to rush the palace; only with a large force can we protect the palace.”

Reminded that Aquino had declared the palace grounds a “people’s park” just after Marcos’ ouster last February, the general said, “This is not the people’s park anymore.”

Leftist leaders Leandro Alejandro and J.V. Bautista told a press conference after the shootings that the Aquino government “is potentially far worse than the previous regime.”

In an interview, Communist rebel negotiator Saturnino Ocampo told reporters that the killings, combined with recent death threats against negotiators on both sides, led them to call off the peace talks for the foreseeable future. He said the decision was made at an emergency three-hour meeting Thursday afternoon.

“We believe that these killings are part of a pattern of military action taken by the Armed Forces of the Philippines to destabilize the situation and blame it on the forces of the National Democratic Front,” Ocampo said, referring to his leftist umbrella group, which has represented the Communist rebels in the month-old peace talks.

Ocampo said the New People’s Army will continue to abide by a 60-day cease-fire until it expires Feb 7, but he left little hope that it will be extended.

Ocampo also condemned Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, the military chief of staff, for blaming the Communists for Tuesday’s bombings of three bridges in the central Philippines and other attacks--a spiral of violence that, in Ramos’ view, shows that the rebels are negotiating with the government in bad faith.

“We lay the responsibility on the Aquino government and its armed forces for the rise of this situation,” Ocampo said.

He said the three government negotiators told him at their meeting Thursday that they attributed the recent statements on violence to “forces outside their control.”

Aquino Campaigning

Clearly, Aquino was assuming none of that responsibility Thursday. She spent the day campaigning for approval of her proposed constitution, which will be submitted to the Filipino people in a referendum Feb 2.