DAVAO CITY, Philippines—Believed kidnapped by military agents only 24 hours earlier, the daughter of a ranking communist guerrilla has turned up dead with stab wounds and torture marks.

A farmer found the body of teacher Rebelyn Pitao, 20, late on Thursday near an irrigation ditch in Purok 5 in Barangay San Isidro, Carmen, Davao del Norte. She was the younger daughter of Leoncio Pitao, aka Commander Parago, of the New People’s Army (NPA).

It took more than three hours for the news to reach the Pitao household that a body presumed to be Rebelyn’s had been found and taken to a funeral parlor in Panabo City, some 30 kilometers north of Davao City.

Evangeline and Rio Pitao, Rebelyn’s mother and elder sister, respectively, traveled to Panabo and identified the body as that of their missing loved one.

It was Rio who broke the painful news to her father, the leader of the NPA’s Pulang Bagani Command in Southern Mindanao, and other family members.

“I did not know how to tell them…” she told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) at the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes, where her sister’s body was moved, on Thursday night.

Rio said Rebelyn’s swollen eyes and cheeks and a mark around her neck indicated that she was beaten heavily before she was strangled.

5 stab wounds

Rebelyn was snatched by armed men suspected by her family as military agents near their house in Bago Gallera de Oro Subdivision in Talomo district at about 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday.

In an autopsy report, Dr. Tomas Dimaandal of the Davao City police said Rebelyn had been dead for more than 20 hours when her body was found.

Dimaandal said five wounds caused by a thin and sharp object such as an ice pick marked a breast and the belly. He said the same sharp object pierced the lungs as well as the liver.

The autopsy report also indicated a laceration, possibly from a hard object, in the genitals.

“They made her suffer. It was a heartbreaking sight for all of us,” Rio said.

Evangeline Pitao, alternately composed and distraught, said: “Why did they do that to her? Why must they involve civilians in their war? My daughter had done nothing wrong, but they killed her. Where is justice?”

‘Automatic’ attribution

Rio said the family had no doubt that soldiers from the 10th Infantry Division were behind her sister’s abduction and murder.

“Who said they would get my father by hook or by crook?” she said, recalling a purported statement by then Maj. Gen. Jogy Leo Fojas that the military would nab Commander Parago by the end of 2008.

But Maj. Randolph Cabangbang, spokesperson of the Eastern Mindanao Command, on Friday said the attribution of the crime to the military was “automatic.”

“We are appealing to them not to make Rebelyn a propaganda issue. We want all to be investigated… This is beyond the fight between the military and the NPA… What happened is a clear desecration of civility and decency. We did not want it to happen… We were not behind it,” Cabangbang said.

But Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo, who was visiting Davao City and was among those who helped retrieve Rebelyn’s body, said: “The denial of the military is also standard.”

Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who had openly admitted friendship with Parago, said involving civilians in the fight against communist insurgents was “not the business of the government.”

“I assure you that once I uncover who is behind this, I will personally arrest him,” Duterte said shortly after hearing of Rebelyn’s abduction on Wednesday.

At Rebelyn’s wake on Thursday night, the mayor appeared angry but was silent. A source close to the Pitaos said he had offered them protection and shelter.

Substitute teacher

Shortly after Rebelyn disappeared while on her way home from St. Peter’s College in Toril, where she was a substitute teacher, Evangeline Pitao told reporters that suspected military agents had always stalked members of her family.

She said her son had decided to stop working because of fear that the military would eventually kill him.

The mother also said the family’s fears were not baseless because a brother of her husband was shot to death by suspected soldiers in Tagum City last year.

The human rights group Karapatan said the killing of Parago’s daughter indicated that “the state’s mercenaries are out to get the families and relatives of NPA leaders” to weaken the communist insurgency.

Said Kelly Delgado, secretary general of Karapatan-Southern Mindanao: “It was a barbaric act that confirmed the kind of military we have—a rabid, cowardly and desperate mercenary. Because of their failure to score against the armed combatants, they will resort to killing civilians.”

No vendetta

Congressman Ocampo said involving the families of combatants in any war was a violation of the international humanitarian law.

He expressed concern over the possibility of the government creating a “scenario of retribution” and attributing it to the NPA.

But he said he was convinced that the NPA would not resort to vendetta: “I can sympathize with Pitao, and I know he will not do it.”

In a statement sent Friday to the Inquirer, Simon Santiago, political director of the NPA in Southern Mindanao, also said neither Parago nor the NPA in general was thinking of attacking the families of soldiers to avenge Rebelyn’s murder.

“The record of the NPA will vouch for it. We even treat our prisoners of war well and that can show what kind of fighters we are. Our revolution, the revolution of the poor and oppressed people, is principled, and we will not succumb to the desperation of the 10th Infantry Division,” Santiago said.