ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines — Bingol Palaraw can no longer dream of going back to school.
The 10-year-old boy was gunned down as he came out of a Muslim religious school in Tipo-tipo, Basilan, Monday night, some eight months after being rescued from Abu Sayyaf terrorists, who had taken they boy in and trained him to be one of them after he had run away from home to escape an abusive stepfather, a military official said.
According to Lieutenant Colonel CJ Paolo Perez, commander of the 18th Infantry Battalion, since his rescue, Palaraw often spoke of wanting to go back to grade school and earn a college degree. The boy, known as Boyong to people close to him, also looked forward to playing more football, Perez said.
Boyong was coming out of the madrasa in Barangay (village) Poblacion in Tipo-tipo around 7 p.m. Monday when a lone gunman casually approached and pumped a number of bullets into the boy with a .45-caliber pistol, Perez told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a telephone interview from his base in Basilan.
The boy died instantly, Perez added.
“We really felt bad about the boy’s killing. We managed to save him from the bandits, debriefed him and he started living a normal life with his grandparents when this thing happened,” he said. “It’s really a waste that his ambitions ended this way.”
Perez could not say if Boyong was executed by the group led by Puruji Indama.
Boyong was in Grade I when his widowed mother remarried.
“In fact when he ran away from home and quit Grade I, he had a broken arm from physical abuse by the stepfather. He was eight years old then,” Perez said, recounting what Boyong had told them during debriefing shortly after he was rescued from the Abu Sayyaf some eight months ago.
He said the boy told them during the debriefing that the Abu Sayyaf in Tipo-tipo treated his broken arm, after which, he became their “ward.”
“His days in the Abu Sayyaf ended when we rescued him during one operation,” Perez added.
Boyong was immediately taken into custody by former Tipo-tipo Mayor Joel Maturan, but the military turned him over to his grandparents as soon as they were identified and located.
“His grandparents decided to enroll him in the madrasa pending the opening of classes this year,” Perez said.
Pressed on how the military could tell Boyong was a child soldier, Perez said the boy himself admitted that the Abu Sayyaf bandits had taught him how to handle various firearms.
“He did not directly admit it, even to the point of denying it at one point. But he knew each caliber of firearm and he knew how to use them,” he said.
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