Tribal peace deal helps solve slay

BAGUIO CITY—For three days in May after the fatal stabbing of 13-year-old Bryden John Crisostomo, outraged residents of Bontoc, the capital of Mountain Province, barred people from Tinglayan town in neighboring Kalinga province, from entering their town.

Informed that the suspected killer is from Tinglayan, they set up a checkpoint on the Bontoc-Tinglayan national road in the border village of Calutit. They politely turned back motorists.

Even owners of boarding houses refused to accept Tinglayan students.

Bontoc is a business center and hosts Mountain Province State Polytechnic College, where many Tinglayan students were enrolled for summer. It also has a general hospital which takes in patients from other Kalinga towns.

The barricade was the mildest form of reprisal from a community that has a long-standing peace agreement with Tinglayan, but it set in motion talks to maintain the accord and to negotiate the surrender of the 17-year-old Tinglayan boy who was accused of the crime committed on April 10.

On May 28, the suspect was surrendered by Kalinga elders to the Tinglayan police, said Senior Supt. Oliver Enmodias, Mountain Province police director. He faces homicide charges and would be turned over to the Bontoc Regional Trial Court.

On Friday, Bontoc elders asked their neighborhood to allow Kalinga students, traders and even hospital patients back to town. The checkpoint was eventually lifted but on condition that it would be made permanent should a joint task force fail to secure the suspected killer.

The surrender was the result of a series of dialogues between the Tinglayan Community Council of Elders and Bontoc’s Movement for the Advancement of Inter-Tribal Unity and Development (Maitud).

Dialogues help avoid violent disputes, Abraham Batawang of Maitud said. His group spoke to chiefs of Bontoc’s 16 villages on Friday, asking them to welcome back Tinglayan residents, including students.