Lensmen at Mendiola didn't expect bloody end to march

“There was no sign that afternoon was going to be bloody," recalls veteran photojournalist Luis Liwanag of his coverage 20 years ago of the Mendiola massacre, which left 13 farmers dead and 80 others wounded. Liwanag, then 27 and photo correspondent for the Agence France Presse news agency, came from covering then President Corazon “Cory" Aquino in Nueva Ecija and was looking for a typical coverage to end the day. By the time he joined other lensmen at the Liwasang Bonifacio in Manila, the last stop of the farmers’ march from the agrarian reform ministry in Quezon City, the throng had swelled to 20,000 farmers, students, workers and church people. The marchers, mostly wearing rubber slippers and worn-out shirts, were demanding for genuine land reform. There was visible tension when the marchers approached the bridge. But most media thought the tension would most likely end in dispersal through water cannon or tear gas like in previous rallies, Liwanag says. Ramon Acasio, another veteran journalist, agrees with Liwanag. “It was Cory’s time. Nobody expected it would be violent," says Acasio, then 23 and photographer of Malaya, the top-circulating newspaper that time. At 4:30 PM, shots were heard. Government forces sporadically fired at the marchers, who scuttled for safety along C.M. Recto Avenue. Minutes later, Mendiola Bridge was a sea of bloodied slippers, shoes and streamers. Several marchers, already drenched in blood, slowly crawled for safety as police military chased others who ran to as far as Luneta Park along Kalaw Avenue. Acasio recalls carrying a number of wounded farmers towards nearby media cars which brought them to the nearest hospitals. He was uncertain, though, whether the farmers survived. “Nobody told us to help. We just found ourselves helping the wounded," Acasio tells on photojournalists at the site the time. Liwanag recalls approaching a farmer sprawled on the street to check if he was still breathing. It was only later he saw the man sustained a fatal wound in the head. Both photojournalists have taken images of each other as among journalists who helped wounded farmers from the site. Their photos would be published nationwide and in other countries for the next days as the kin of victims called for justice. Malaya even published a photo essay in its Sunday magazine, prompting then agrarian reform chief Heherson Alvarez to recall its publication. “But my paper stood its ground. We did not pull out the photo essay," says Acasio. The coverage was actually a test to these journalists’ commitment to the time-tested teaching of objectivity in journalism. “I saw the ruthlessness of the military. I was angry, but I should not show it," says Liwanag. For Acasio, the farmers had legitimate calls that should not have been met with violence. No police or military personnel who fired their arms at the incident were ever indicted. The Supreme Court upheld a lower court rule that the State is immune from suits. Families of the slain farmers, meanwhile, received P10,000 each from the government, and the injured, P5,000. GMANews.TV