Human rights group Karapatan said it had fielded Saturday a team to check on a 75-member quick reaction mission it had lost contact with since it was reportedly held by troops of the Army’s 8th Infantry Battalion in a remote village of Antipolo, Rizal Friday afternoon.
“Confirmed na hinold sila ng army (It’s confirmed that they were held by the army),” Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said of the mission led by Gloria Rodriguez and Georgelyn Rafael Millizo of the group’s Rizal and Southern Tagalog offices, respectively.
She told InterAksyon.com that the mission was on its way to verify reports that two Dumagat tribesmen may have been killed in the course of military operations in Barangay Calawis.
On Thursday, the 2nd Infantry Division based in Tanay, Rizal said its troops had clashed with New People’s Amy guerrillas in Rodriguez town after intelligence reports indicated the rebels supposedly intended to launch an operation in Calawis.
Although news reports quoting the Army’s account of the clash cited an “undetermined number” of rebel casualties, Palabay said residents of the area reported “mga Dumagat daw ‘yung dalawang pinatay at hindi NPA. Kaya ito ang iimbestigahan sana ng quick reaction mission (those killed were Dumagat not NPA. This is what the quick reaction mission was supposed to investigate).”
“Kahit mahina ang signal sa lugar (Even if the signal was weak), they were able to send a message at around 4-5 p.m. na hinold nga sila. Lakad ang ginawa nila mula sa sentro ng (that they had been held. They walked from the center of) Barangay Calawis, then 4 hours to target site,” Palabay said.
The Karapatan officer said they decided to deploy the new team when they still could not contact the mission by 8:49 a.m. Saturday.
http://interaksyon.com/article/137454/karapatan-searches-for-probe-mission-held-by-army-in-rizal
Same old. Same old. Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-affiliated human rights front group KARAPATAN (Alliance for the Advancement of People's Rights)conducts a "fact-finding mission" with regard to Philippine military operations in Rizal province. The standard ploy used by KARAPATAN is to assert that anyone killed (or wounded) by AFP military units are not members of the Maoist New People's Army, the insurgent military wing of the CPP, but rather are innocent peasants, indigenous people, or just ordinary citizens. Then the group accuses the military of having committed massive human rights abuses in violation of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Law (CARHRIHL). You could predict this predetermined propaganda moro-moro even before the KARAPATAN fact-finding mission left its departure point.
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