Human rights group Karapatan has asked the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to investigate the killings last Friday night, May 28, of three persons, including two National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace consultants.
Sought to be investigated by the CHR are the deaths of peace consultants former Roman Catholic priest Rustico Tan and Reynaldo Bocata, as well as Bocata’s aide Arguelles Epago.
Through Karapatan’s secretary general Cristina Palabay, the CHR was told that “these incidents and killings should also be investigated in the context of previous incidents of killings and attacks against other NDFP peace consultants or spokespersons, who were killed in similar patterns, whether in the course of purported service of warrants or involving unnamed individuals in the dead of the night, as well as the Duterte government’s blatant terror-tagging of peace consultants through the Anti-Terrorism Act, which we have already feared is a de facto death warrant.”
Karapatan asked the administration of President Duterte “to put a stop to the killings and to abide by the NDFP-GRP Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.”
It said that Tan, 80, was sleeping on a hammock when he was shot dead in Purok Caimito, Barangay Upper Poblacion, Pilar, Camotes Islands in Cebu.
Palabay said that Tan, whom she said had been charged with trumped up murder, served as a NDFP peace consultant in the 1980s but had retired and had engaged in community organic farming.
She said that Bocata, 75, and Epago, 60, were killed during a raid of a house in Providence Subdivision, Barangay Balabag, in Pavia, Iloilo. The raid was conducted by joint elements of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) which were serving four arrest warrants, she added.
Bocata, Palabay also said, was the husband of Ma. Concepcion “Concha” Araneta-Bocala, who was among those designated as terrorists by the Anti-Terrorism Council last May 13.