Davao media used to call him ‘Tatay,’ a term of endearment used to appease than it was to respect him. In the words of some scribes and pundits, he was an Idi Amin copycat, a denigrating reference of the Ugandan dictator who was deposed in 1979 for his extreme tyranny. To the activists and victims of the Marcos military rule, he was the epitome of a human rights violator. Through it all, he was nonchalant of the negative impressions hurled against him.
On one occasion, while drinking his Johnny Walker Black Label at the lobby of Cuison Hotel (now a medical center along Bajada), Region 11 commander Brig. Gen. Alfredo S. Olano, in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, was interviewed by Pamela G. Hollie of the New York Times in 1982.
He was crooning with the hotel band the 1945 song ‘Autumn Leaves’ and segued into the 1934 ballad ‘Blue Moon’ before leaving his table for the interview to the loud applause of the junior officers escorting him.
Jokingly, Gen. Olano told the journalist that he was “notorious’ and that everybody believed him to be another Idi Amin. As the regional commander of the Philippine Constabulary (PC), he was open to taking responsibility for the involuntary relocation of farmers, a declaration that earned him the outrage of clerics, lawyers, and human rights activists.
In a February 26, 1982, story (‘Army’s Treatment of Filipino Civilians Criticized’), Hollie paraphrased the general: “To stem increases in the activity of the insurgent New People’s Army, the military… felt it necessary to move farmers living in ”sensitive areas” into strategic settlements or hamlets to protect them from the Communist rebels and to keep them out of the fighting. There are about 100,000 people living in at least 35 such strategic settlements in Mindanao.”
Hamletting is not original to the Philippines. The action started in Malaya in the 1950s and repeated in South Vietnam in the 1960s. Domestically, it drew a forceful rebuke from the human rights commission of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) which was clamoring for the stoppage of hamletting and compensating the people affected by the rude military action.
The abusive treatment of farmers in Davao even after martial law was lifted in January 1981, continued despite denials. Reports of military manipulations, including the torture of arbitrarily detained suspected subversives, piled up and these attracted the attention of Amnesty International and the American embassy in Manila.
Based on the government claims at the time, the number of guerrillas comprising the New People’s Army (NPA), the communist military wing, was estimated at 2,500.
‘To eliminate the dissidents,” the article stated, “the Government appears to have greatly increased garrisons, patrols, arrests and, according to critics, abuses of personal and property rights. Around Davao, there is much talk of the ‘lost command’ a mysterious paramilitary unit that has been accused of extreme brutality. The government, though, denied such a group existed.
To create a façade and give the impression of moral victory on the part of the military, the government even claimed that thousands of insurgents had returned to the fold of law but through a subtle military request of inviting farmers from upland regions to pledge allegiance to the state. When they obliged, they were later told that the oath-taking was actually ‘a wholesale surrender ceremony’ which the authorities shared with the press as ‘a mass surrender.’
Because the surrender led to hamletting, the farmlands were abandoned.
Gen. Olano, apparently caught in a subject that was uneasy and controversial, excused politely himself from the interview and proceeded to join his colleagues, took the microphone, and sang Frank Sinatra’s 1969 global hit titled ‘My Way’ to the accompaniment of the band.
