Pro-Government Militias

Pro-Government Militia Website

Documentation for Pulahan

Dec. 12, 1987
United Press International

The battle on Mindanao began before dawn when members of the communist New People's Army attacked about 100 vigilantes patroling a town 11 miles from Davao City in Mindanao, said district commander Lt. Col. Franco Calida.
The detachment included elements of the government's Civilian Home Defense Force backed by the Pulahan and Alsa Masa vigilante groups, Calida said.

May 3, 1988
Washington Post

President Corazon Aquino, who took power in February 1986, named as Davao's new metropolitan district commander Col. Franco Calida,
The umbrella group for the vigilantes is "Alsa Masa" ("Mass Uprising" in the Tagalog language), originally a group of ex-communists who became disenchanted with the party. The Alsa Masa organization now includes 900 armed and paid anticommunist fighters, 2,000 unpaid volunteers, such as village chieftains and local officials, and a group of intelligence operatives.

They are supplemented by groups of armed religious, quasi-Christian cultists, such as the notorious Tadtad (Chop to Pieces) who tend to mutilate their victims, and the even more fanatical Pulahan (The Red Ones), whose members are said to believe that bullets will simply pass through their bodies without harming them.

"These are volunteers," Calida explained in his office recently. During the interview, a bearded Pulahan came in asking "The Godfather" for ammunition for his World War II-vintage Thompson machine gun.

Oct. 22, 1991
Agence France Press

Members of an anti-communist cult have been implicated in the murder of a priest who spoke out from the pulpit against illegal logging in the south Philippines, police and church sources here said Tuesday. (…)
They said the suspects, who remain at large, included a soldier, a military informer and members of the Rizalian Pulahan, an anti-communist militia who are armed by the military and who practice bizarre pseudo-Christian rituals.

March 17, 1999
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

Text of report by Philippines GMA Network television on 16th March; phrases in capital letters received in English
Intense gunfight has broken out in Mindanao. According to a report from Sultan Kudarat, the gunfight between suspected members of the MILF Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Christian militia groups known as Tadtad Chop and Pulahan Red Specie started before noon yesterday. Pangeles YES, THAT IS TRUE. You see, the troops sent by the government yesterday belong to the Lutayan PNP Philippine National Police . Lutayan is a municipality of Sultan Kudarat and Palavilla village is part of Lutayan. The PNP troops sent were led by Senior Inspector Cadil Masahud. However, our compatriots - the Christian Ilonggos - here, are not convinced, because it seems that the PNP reaction here is passive. Yesterday, being only 500 m. away from the area of conflict in Palavilla I could hear the shooting of M203, M79 and grenade launchers, RPG, of the enemy. The PNP avoided the conflict and left the ARMED MILITIA MEN who call themselves FACE-TO-FACE Pulahan as you have reported, and the group of the Ilaga Rats of the 1970s.

March 19, 1999
BusinessWorld

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is willing to talk peace with a small group of armed Christians in Sultan Kudarat province if only to stop further bloodshed in the area.
MILF vice-chair for political affairs Ghazali Jaafar told BusinessWorld in a telephone interview yesterday his group is willing to settle peacefully its differences with a small group of Christian cultists, who call themselves pulahan, if only to stop sectarian violence from flaring further and playing into the hands of extremists who want to revive Christian-Muslim conflict.


The pulahan claims to have 100 members, some of whom are armed with guns.
"There is no point fighting against this small group, even if they are challenging us," Mr. Jaafar said.
Reports reaching the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) headquarters in Camp General Emilio Aguinaldo showed 300 heavily armed MILF rebels clashed with the cultists in Barangay Palavilla in Sultan Kudarat, killing three civilians believed to be cultists.

March 25, 1999
China Daily

Murad Ibrahim, ...Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said the military and the Christian "pulahan" cult attacked their positions in Sultan Kudarat province late on Tuesday

May 25, 2000
BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

Philippine vigilante groups start attacking Muslims
A military intelligence source said five vigilante groups operate in General Santos City. Aside from the Alliance of Christian Vigilantes for a Muslim Free Mindanao, there are the Sagrado Corazon De Jesus, the Pulahan, the Tadtad and Ilaga led by Kumander Inday.
Most of these groups were also used during the late President Ferdinand Marcos' two-decade rule.

Dec. 15, 2000
Agence France Press

Eleven people were killed when hundreds of machete-wielding members of two rival pseudo-Christian cults clashed in a small southern Philippine island, police said Friday.
About 100 armed members of the Pulahan (Redshirts) sect attacked on Wednesday evening the shrine of the Philippine Benevolent Missionary Association (PBMA) in the island of Dinagat, the national police headquarters said in a report.

About 200 PBMA members repulsed the attack and hacked to death 11 members of the Pulahan sect including their leader Edecio Quinanola, it said. One PBMA security guard was injured.

Jan. 8, 2016
BWA Heritage & Identity Commission; http://www.bwa-baptist-heritage.org/phil-Pas.htm. accessed Jan. 8, 2016

Some of the early converts were members of the “Pulahan” group roaming in the Visayas mountains. The “Pulahans” were a group of people who resisted the long Spanish colonial rule through violent means. They used this method of resistance against the Americans too. The famous Pulahan was Papa Isio, who continued the struggle even when the Negros elite sided with the Americans. “His group, the babaylanes or pulahanes, burned haciendas owned by pro-American elite.” But later on, some of these revolutionaries were converted and became Baptist pastors. They welcomed the Americans, because the Christianity that the Americans brought was convincing. Moreover, the American missionaries enabled them to read the Bible in their own language.