Friday, September 18, 2015

Eastern Visayas rebels blame lawmaker for Calbayog massacre

From InterAksyon (Sep 19): Eastern Visayas rebels blame lawmaker for Calbayog massacre



CATARMAN, Northern Samar -- Communist rebels in Eastern Visayas have accused a lawmaker for Wednesday’s massacre of five persons, including two children, in a remote village of Calbayog City, Samar.

Fr. Santiago Salas, spokesman of the National Democratic Front in the region, in a statement dated September 17, condemned the carnage in Barangay Victory and blamed Samar Representative Milagrosa Tan.

This reporter tried multiple times to phone Tan for a reaction but she did not answer the calls.

Salas claimed Tan is “behind the dirty tactics of political murders and intimidation in Western Samar. The NPA (New People’s Army) also knows that a squad of assassins from Northern Samar has been added to the private army of the Tan dynasty, thus fuelling its reckless brutality."

Police earlier said Sonny Regulacion y Casaljay, 38, his children Cristina, Angel Mae, 2, and Princess Christine Joy, 5, and a relative, Adela Regulacion y Acebar, 42, died when around seven gunmen, reportedly clad in military fatigues and wearing hoods to conceal their faces, opened fire at a house in Barangay Victory, Calbayog.

Another child, a seven-year old girl, and Sonny's wife, Marlene Natayangga, 40, a barangay kagwad, were wounded in the incident.

Authorities said they were not discounting local politics as a possible motive for the massacre since Sonny was a known leader of Calbayog Mayor Ronald Aquino.

Aquino is a known opponent of Tan and is a close ally of new Interior Secretary Mel Senen Sarmiento, who hails from Calbayog.

Salas, in his statement, also blasted Sarmiento for failing to address several unsolved killings in the congressional district he used to represent before being named to head the Department of Interior and Local Government.

Among these were last year’s murders of Calbayog Association of Barangay Chairman president Justiniano Belleza in front of the city’s legislative building and of former Barangay Cabicahan chairman Fernando Ygrubay and a companion in a separate incident. 

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/117746/eastern-visayas-rebels-blame-lawmaker-for-calbayog-massacre

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