HUMAN rights advocate Kara-patan on Tuesday
claimed the government’s counter-insurgency program has notched
this year’s first victims in a carpenter and a former political
detainee.
Karapatan said Tildo Reba-monte, 45, a
carpenter from Claveria, Masbate, was abducted by members of the
PNP Regional Mobile Group last Jan. 12 and forcibly taken to the
ranch of Claveria mayor Eduardo Andueza in Barangay Binas.
The group claimed witness accounts said the
policemen tried to force Tildo to disclose the alleged camps of
the New People’s Army camps in the area. The group said the
policemen took Tildo along last Jan. 14 in their search for NPA
camps. Two days later, Karapatan said Rebamonte, his hands
crushed and his face sporting gashes, was found dead. His body
was taken by policemen to the Claveria town hall.
Karapatan said its Masbate chapter was
informed of the killing by a neighbor of Rebamonte’s.
PNP’s Task Force Usig, however, claimed that
Rebamonte died in a legitimate encounter between NPA and
government security forces. Director Jefferson Soriano,
concurrent head of TF Usig and the directorate for investigation
and detective management, said Rebamonte was with four NPAs who
engaged police in an encounter last Jan. 15 in Barangay
Malapinggan.
Soriano, citing a report from Senior Supt.
Henry Ranola, chief of the Bicol Regional Investigation and
Detective Management Division, said Rebamonte was seriously
wounded in that encounter, was abandoned by his companions, and
succumbed while being evacuated to the town proper for
treatment.
"We immediately took cognizance of the case
of Rebamonte because it was first reported by the Kilusang
Magbubukid ng Pilipinas as a case of political violence.
However, we found out that the incident was the result of a
legitimate encounter between police forces and the NPA," Soriano
said.
The second incident involved ex-political
prisoner Ronald Sendrijas who was reportedly gunned down on his
35th birthday last Jan. 17 in Tagbilaran City, Bohol. Karapatan
said Sendrijas was released from prison in August 2006 after
being charged with rebellion and criminal cases. It said
Sendrijas had gone to a pharmacy to buy some medicine after
visiting his sister who had just given birth when two men on a
motorcycle came around, one of them calling him by name to
confirm his identity, then putting two bullets to the back of
his head.
Prior to Sendrijas’ death, Karapatan said he
became a target of a vilification campaign by police and the
military. He was implicated by former Bohol police chief Arturo
Evangelista in the assassination of Bayan-Bohol chairman Victor
Olayvar on Sept. 17, 2006.
Sendrijas reportedly told colleagues that he had been offered
positions in government in exchange for his surrender and
cooperation with the Army’s 302nd Infantry Brigade. Sendrijas’
sister told Karapatan-Bohol her brother told her he was under
surveillance and had been receiving death threats through his
mobile phone. – Job T. Realubit and Raymond Africa
