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ZAMBOANGA CITY: Government militias attacked a group of human rights
investigators on an island off Zamboanga City. The Commission on
Human Rights (CHR) said militias attacked three of its investigators
on the island of Limaong over the weekend. There were no reports of
casualties or injuries, but the attack sent a chilling warning that
even human rights investigators are not really safe in Mindanao.
Lawyer Jose Manuel Mamauag, CHR regional chief,
said his team, accompanied by a forensic expert from the National
Bureau of Investigation were returning to Zamboanga City on board a
motorized boat when army-led militias opened fire on them.
“Our team was lucky that no one was killed or
wounded in the strafing by government militias, but we will file
criminal charges against them,” he told The Manila Times.
Mamauag said the CHR team was on the island to
exhume the remains of a possible human rights victim. “We still
don’t know if the attack on our team was connected to our
investigation on the island,” he said.
Early this month, a navy patrol also attacked a
group of Muslim fishermen off Taluksangay in Zamboanga City and
killed one person. Security officials denied it was behind the
attack, but navy soldiers also arrested more than a dozen fishermen
on suspicion that they were terrorists, village leaders said.
In February, navy commandos and army soldiers
also killed seven Muslim civilians and an off-duty soldier in a raid
on an alleged Abu Sayyaf hideout in the town of Maimbung in Sulu
province.
The military insisted the raid was an operation
to rescue kidnapped businesswoman Rosalie Lao from her Abu Sayyaf
abductors. The raid resulted to the deaths of seven civilians,
including two children, two teenagers, and a pregnant woman.
Two soldiers were also killed while four others
were wounded when armed villagers allegedly retaliated.
Human rights investigators denied that there
were Abu Sayyaf militants in the village during the raid and accused
the troops involved in the operation of plundering the houses of the
villagers.
-- Al Jacinto
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