DAVAO CITY — Human rights group Karapatan Southern Mindanao on Tuesday said the military had falsely claimed that the 15-year old boy killed by soldiers in Barangay Astorga in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur on Saturday was a communist rebel.
Jay Apiag, Karapatan Southern Mindanao secretary general, said the boy was only vacationing in Astorga. He tagged the military’s claim as malicious and baseless and “at the expense of his [the boy’s] grieving kin.”
Apiag gave a different name, however, to the slain boy, calling him Jhun Mark Acto of Makilala, North Cotabato.
On Monday, Maj. Ezra Balagtey, the spokesperson of the Eastern Mindanao Command based here, said one of the two slain rebels in the Astorga clash was later identified as 15-year old Rondi Ondo, a resident of Makilala, North Cotabato.
“He was identified by his mother Marissa A. Ondo at a Funeral Parlor in Sta. Cruz, Davao Del Sur during a public identification,” Balagtey said. /atm