402nd Infantry Brigade commander Col. Isidro Purisima tells lumad evacuees his troops will be pulled out of their villages. (photo courtesy of Karapatan Caraga)
More than 2,000 lumad refugees will begin their journey back to the homes they fled exactly one year to the day when members of a military-backed militia murdered a well-loved school head and two of their leaders in Lianga town, Surigao del Sur.
But while the military, whose presence in their community had held them back from going home sooner, has promised to pull out of Barangay Diatagon, the men who slit the throat of Emerito Samarca, director of the award-winning Alternative Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development, in the school he ran, and executed Dionel Campos, chairman of the Malahutayong Pakigbisog Alang Sa Sumusunod (Persevering Struggle for the Next Generation or MAPASU), and his kinsman Datu Bello Sinzo in front of hundreds, including children, remain free.
In fact, in the months following the Lianga murders, when up to 4,000 lumad evacuated from their hinterland villages in several Surigao del Sur towns to the sports center in the provincial capital Tandag City, witnesses, including local government officials and church leaders, said the militia that called itself the Magahat-Bagani continued to operate openly with military units, among them brothers Bobby Loloy Tejero, and Margarito Tejero Layno, who have been charged for the murders and are the subjects of standing warrants.
The suspects in the Lianga murders of September 1, 2015 are shown in a wanted poster created by the human rights group Karapatan.
In December last year, Bobby Tejero even released a video in which he threatened to ambush journalists covering the anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
The Army has admitted that troops were camped nearby when Campos and Sinzo were executed but did nothing to prevent their deaths or apprehend the killers.
And during a House inquiry into the Surigao del Sur evacuations late last year, Marcos Bocales, who the Lianga killers named as their leader, who appeared escorted by military officers, he justified the murder of Samarca for "poisoning" the minds of lumad youth with communism.
The military has also long accused ALCADEV and the Manobo community that hosts it of supporting communist rebels, a charge it has also leveled against other tribal schools set up and operated in lumad villages by religious and civil society groups.
The Friends of the Lumad in Caraga, in a statement issued Thursday, said the returning refugees come from 22 communities in five Surigao del Sur municipalities.
The group, which declared September 1 "Eydow Tu Pakigsantuya Tu Tumindok Kane't Caraga" (Day of Struggle of the Indigenous Peoples of Caraga), said in the year they stayed at the Tandag sports center, five reufgees, three of them children, have died.
On the other hand, "86 mothers gave birth and 86 children started their lives as evacuees," the statement attributed to United Church of Christ in the Philippines Bishop Modesto Villasanta said.
On August 30, Colonel Isidro Purisima, commander of the Army’s 402nd Infantry Brigade, told some 500 lumad who trooped to the unit’s headquarters that their troops would pull out of their communities in Diatagon. In fact, he promised to “hand over” the communities to the returning residents on September 2.
Karapatan said “documentation teams noted that military camps and presence of soldiers were in the middle of Km. 9 and in the ALCADEV school grounds in Sitio Han-ayan,” where they had already been documented by an international fact-finding mission last October.
Despite the presence of government representatives, Karapatan said the soldiers refused to be interviewed.
The ocular inspection team reported that “all houses of the residents were damaged, either burned, ransacked or vandalized; their household and personal belongings destroyed or looted; and all primary and ALCADEV school buildings and facilities were structurally damaged, and school equipment and education materials irreparably destroyed,” according to Karapatan.
“Houses situated close to where the military encamped were among the worst damaged and looted as observed during the ocular visit,” it added.
Among the new damage observed, it said, were bullet holes in the house of Campos and the ALCADEV gym that “were not present during the 2015 IFFM.”
http://interaksyon.com/article/131997/lianga-killers-still-free-as-surigao-del-sur-lumad-prepare-to-go-home
KARAPATAN (Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights) is the main Communist Party of the Philippines-associated human rights umbrella front organizations in the Philippines with chapters active throughout the country. Statements and claims made by KARAPATAN should be viewed with skepticism given the groups ideological orientation.
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