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MONKAYO, Compostela Valley: A farmer claiming to have
been abducted from his residence by military personnel on December
12, was found seriously wounded, the Philippine News Agency
reported.
Renato Ramogas, a resident of
Barangay Casoon, Monkayo town, is presently confined at the Davao
Regional Hospital in Tagum City, due to eight stab wounds he
sustained.
Ramogas was preparing coconut
shells for charcoal when armed men dressed in military uniforms
arrived and allegedly forced him to go with them.
Besides Ramogas, the military
hauled off three other farmers on that day.
As this develop, their relatives
then had the incident recorded at the Monkayo Police Station, where
they claimed that the four farmers were abducted by the military on
suspicion that they were elements of the Front Committee No. 20 of
the communist New People’s Army.
A few days later, a certain PFC
Cristuto Urabia turned over to the Monkayo police three farmers, but
without Ramogas.
The soldier told the police that
the three farmers were merely stopped from gathering rattan without
any permit from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
On December 18, residents of
Barangay Hamiguitan also in Monkayo, found Ramogas with a total of
eight stab wounds but still alive. They rushed him to the hospital
for treatment.
After regaining some strength,
Ramogas was able to relate his experience to some human rights
activists and members of media, with whom he claimed to have been
abducted by alleged scout rangers and detained in an area that was
not familiar to him.
He also claimed to have been
tortured and made to admit that he is a communist guerilla.
Ramogas recalled that on December
17, he was forced into a vehicle where he was stabbed several times
before his attackers dumped him in a vacant lot, thinking perhaps
that with the wounds he sustained, he was already dead.
At press time, Ramogas is still
under observation at the Intensive Care Unit of the Davao Regional
Hospital.
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