Vilma Salabao —PHOTO COURTESY OF KARAPATAN-SOUTHERN TAGALOG
MANILA, Philippines — A human rights group on Wednesday called on the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police to release the body of a female farmworker who had been tagged as a communist rebel and brutally killed by soldiers in Baras, Rizal province, on Dec. 17.
Vilma Salabao was one of five workers in a mango farm at Barangay San Juan in Baras who were killed in an alleged shootout with Army soldiers and policemen who had come to the farm to serve a warrant of arrest on a communist rebel.
The other four workers who were killed were identified through their morgue records as Wesley Obmerga, Carlito Zonjo, and brothers Jhonatan and Niño Alberga.
Tortured
According to the human rights group Karapatan, which had sent a fact-finding mission to Baras to look into the killings, the bodies of the four men bore signs of torture and mutilation—their teeth had been extracted and the bones of their hands had been broken through pounding. The testicles of the Albergas had been burned, Karapatan said.
The four men were buried after Christmas. But Salabao’s body remains in the morgue, as the Baras police refuse to allow her family to recover it, Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said on Wednesday.
Casey Ann Cruz, a paralegal for the activist group Bayan in Southern Tagalog and who represents Salabao’s family, said police had promised to return the body to the family before Christmas, but later refused to do so.
Cruz said members of the family had learned that the barangay had canceled their certificates of residency and that their identity records had disappeared from the barangay files.
She said the regional division of the government’s anti-insurgency task force was pressuring the local government to withhold further information about those killed in the Dec. 17 police-military operation.
Members of the Salabao family, Cruz said, were questioning why the operation led to the five people’s deaths when the arrest warrant was not even meant for them.
The warrant of arrest was for one Antonio Huli, allegedly a finance officer of the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.
Mango farm caretakers
Neighbors said those killed were caretakers at a mango farm in Sitio Malalim, Baras. They were in a house on the farm when soldiers and policemen arrived early on Dec. 17 and shot them.
In a phone interview with the Inquirer on Dec. 22, Brig. Gen. Alex Rillera, commander of the Army’s 202nd Infantry Brigade, said the security
forces arrived to serve the warrant of arrest on Huli when people inside the house opened fire. The troops returned fire, killing five people in the house.
Rillera said those killed had been engaged in extortion, as shown by a list of businesses, several mobile phones, laptops and firearms that had been recovered from them.
Residents interviewed for the fact-finding mission said the victims cried for help when the security forces arrived, belying the military’s claim of a shootout.
Palabay said the residents expressed surprise at allegations that the victims were communist rebels.
“The AFP and the PNP is now getting more notorious for their narrative that whenever they serve warrants [the suspects] end up [killed in an exchange of fire],” Bayan Southern Tagalog said in a statement.
In a separate statement, Palabay said the claim of Interior Secretary Eduardo Año that the victims were communist rebels was intended to cover up a war crime.
She called on the military and the police to return Salabao’s body to her family, and asked the Commission on Human Rights to investigate the killings.
No legitimate family members
Capt. Jayrald Ternio, public affairs office chief of the 2nd ID, said Salabao’s body could not be released yet because “no legitimate family member has claimed the body.”
The December 17 operations were conducted by a unit of the 2nd ID with the Rizal PNP which served the arrest warrants.
He said in a text message, “Four cadavers were already claimed by their legitimate families.”
He pointed out, “The fifth cannot be released yet by the PNP since no legitimate family member has claimed the body.”