ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines (Philippine Human Rights reporting Project / Apri. 10, 2009 – Each year the city government buries dozens of unknown and unclaimed men, women and children. Most are buried collectively in the village of Mampang about 9 kilometers from here.
The bodies – unceremoniously labeled “unclaimed cadavers” by the funeral parlors who keep them for up to a year, have been found in abandoned and isolated lots in and around the city and its precincts. Many appear to have died unnatural, violent deaths and some show signs of torture according to local human rights lawyers who allege they were victims of summarily killings.
The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Western Mindanao documented eight victims of ‘salvaging’ in March 2009 alone - an average of two a week.
“We have not identified them yet. It's kind of a difficult probe," says CHR regional director Jose Manuel Mamauag of the bodies he sought to catalogue last month.
The victims typically go to their graves unknown and unmourned. And so it would have been for ‘Edgar’ -- one of the smallest of them -- had it not been for his mother who spotted the missing 14-year-old among those bodies lumped with others ready for burial in an unmarked and communal grave.
Edgar’s death in October last year sparked a little local interest when the boy's own twin brother, ‘Ben,’ from Barangay (village) Santa Catalina – alleged that the city government's traffic enforcers or traffic ‘police’ were responsible.
But it seems the killing was quietly hushed up and forgotten. Edgar was a street beggar after all.
The family and the twin brother whose real identity the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project is keeping confidential for safety reasons, said they and several other children who admit to being beggars during the day but who go back to their families at night, were rounded up on the Mayor Cesar Climaco Avenue near Jollibee fast food store by two traffic enforcers of the Zamboanga City Hall Office on Monday, October 27 at around 10:00 a.m.
Based on the twin Ben’s recollection, his brother and several other boys were playing around the sidewalk near Jollibee when two traffic ‘policemen’ rounded them up, complaining about a series of cell phone robberies in the area.
The ‘police’ made the boys do some weeding in front of nearby City Hall before they were fed later that afternoon. They were then made to ride a COMPAC vehicle which drove off towards Abong-abong in Barangay Pasonanca.
According to Ben, six youths were ordered into the vehicle after another three younger children were released by the two suspects. Ben estimated the age of those let go to be aged 12 and under. Of the remaining six, he said, three were handcuffed – including his brother.
Later the traffic ‘police’ ordered the children to board a white open van. When the boys realized they were heading towards the quiet mountainous area of Pasonanca they started to panic.
“My twin was confident nothing bad would happen to them,” said Ben, “but in case something did, I was to tell my mother.”
Ben said he jumped off the vehicle as it slowed while heading up a hill. It was the last time he ever saw his twin.
In the days and weeks that followed, Edgar’s parents searched for their missing son. They finally found him in the Villa Funeral Parlor one month later on November 29.
According to ‘Vidad’ an employee of Villa’s, the boy’s body had been found on October 30 in the Abong-abong area of Zamboanga City. His hands had been tied with wire and his body bore multiple stab wounds.
"We don't have clear suspects," Police Sr. Supt. Mario Yanga, officer-in-charge of the Zamboanga City Police Office, told the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project after the authorities were contacted last month.
Yanga added that many of the bodies that turn up in the city’s funeral parlors but are left unclaimed have been ‘liquidated’ for “unpaid debts,” or “because of drug crime.” Other he said were those “whose relatives were too ashamed to come forward to claim them.”
He admitted however that the killing of the 14-year-old boy could not be easily dismissed as a simple murder. "Traffic enforcers have been identified as the suspects," he confirmed.
"The case also opened to us other issues including the need to re-educate our police personnel on different subjects on human rights, including extrajudicial killings," he said. The local CHR office has confirmed it had recently been approached by Yanga to provide human rights training for police personnel here.
Yanga added that the Zamboanga City police are now working closely with the CHR and have established 12 human rights desks in 12 police stations in 98 barangays.
The family of the young boy reportedly contacted local media late last year in a bid to find the killers. But when Zamboanga City Mayor Celso Lobregat "requested" local media not to highlight the story it was left largely unreported: Only one local TV affiliate of a national station covered it.
The issue of summary killings in Zamboanga City was the backdrop of a journalists' training workshop by the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project late last month led by its partner the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.
Anne Montano Soberano, a journalism teacher and a reporter of Bombo Radyo in Zamboanga said the training urged local reporters and editors not to dismiss unusual cases such as that of the 14-year-old boy as a “simple crime.”
And several of her colleagues now perceive the 14-year-old Edgar to be a probable victim of an extrajudicial killing.
“We need to pursue the case and find out what really happened,” says Hader Glang, assistant editor of Zamboanga Today.
Far more used to be tasked by Manila to report on kidnappings and so-called terrorist attacks on the neighboring islands of the Sulu Archipelago, it seems journalists here are waking up to incidents that allegedly victimize local street children in the name of peace and order. (Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project / The author is a correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.)
Link: http://www.rightsreporting.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5938&Itemid=130
No comments:
Post a Comment