MABALACAT, Pampanga -- A veteran
Pampanga journalist has been receiving death threats and was hounded by a
gunman during the weekend.
Ding Cervantes, correspondent of the
Philippine Star and a member of the National Union of Journalists of the
Philippines, told investigators of the Dau police station that he first
received a threatening text message late Friday night.
The message said: “Isang bala ka
lang (You’re just good for a bullet).”
However, he said he dismissed this
message and even erased it.
But on Saturday, the journalist said
he saw a gunman apparently casing his house on Quezon St. in Barangay
Lakandula.
It was past dusk, he said, when he
saw a man “watching our closed store at the other end of the fence of our home
lot as I was backing out my car from the garage. When I rolled my car out
facing him, he turned around to send a text on his phone.”
When he returned home with his brother
later, “the same person, with his pistol bulging from his right hip, was again
there near the gate,” Cervantes said. The man again turned around and acted as
if he was texting “and then walked away fast.”
Sunday morning, as he went out to
feed his dog, Cervantes said he saw a man peeping inside his gate while
saying, “Atiyu, atiyu (he’s here, he’s here),” and then
walking away.
Rushing inside his house, Cervantes
said he peered out the window and saw the man talking on his mobile phone.
Soon after, he again began receiving
threatening messages from the mobile number +639435052612, which he then
recalled was the same number through which the original threat was sent.
A text received 9:18 a.m. said: “Wag
kang palaban. May nagmamatyag sayo dyan sa bahay mo at kahit san ka punta.
Nakasalalay buhay mo sa amin. NPA” (Don’t he feisty. Someone is
monitoring you in your house and wherever you go. Your life depends on us.
NPA).
At 8:30 p.m., another message said: “Huling babala eto. Wag ka sumbong pulis may kapit din kami. At teritoryo namig ng NPA di lang bamban pati dyan.”(This is the final warning. Don’t dare tell the police, we also have connections with them. And Bamban [Tarlac] is not our only territory but your area too).
“The last text was loaded with some
information, whether intentional or out of stupidity, since it hinted of
Bamban, Tarlac as the possible location of the texter,” Cervantes said.
But the journalist dismissed the
involvement of the New People’s Army in the threat and surveillance.
“I have been in journalism for
decades and I would know what’s really from NPA and when the NPA is merely
being used to intimidate,” he said.
He recalled that recently, a family
from Barangay Virgen de los Remedios had threatened him over a dispute
involving his brother and his common-law wife.
But he also said he has recently
written about controversial subjects such as the murder of Dutch missionary
Willen Geertman, Hacienda Luisita, and the Apeco project in Aurora.
This is not the first time Cervantes
has been targeted.
In 1987, he was shot in the belly
during the closure of a huge alcohol plant in Sulipan, Apalit in Pampanga.
The plant’s closure came after a
series of articles he wrote on the pollution it was causing in rivers in
Pampanga and Bulacan.
And in 2005, four men aimed rifles at
Cervantes as he was driving his van.
This was after he wrote articles on
illegal gambling.
Cervantes is respected by his peers
in the province and is the first “presidential awardee” of the Pampanga Press
Club for community journalism. He was also named Most Oustanding
Guagueno in the field of journalism.(By NUJP)