EDITORIAL - Deadly encounter

Soldiers of the 88th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army killed a woman and wounded her husband after mistaking the two for armed rebel insurgents in a remote area of Barangay St. Peter, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon, last Monday, June 15.

According to reports, the soldiers were on patrol as a result of heightened alert status when they came upon the couple gathering firewood. They misidentified a piece of wood one of them was carrying as a scoped M14 rifle and approached.

The couple ran after seeing the soldiers, who opened fire and killed Nenita Buscada and wounded her husband who was not named. She and her husband were members of a local tribe and were reportedly gathering firewood there as work to support the schooling of their only child.

At least in this incident, the military actually admitted they were at fault. A far cry from what they usually do when they tag everyone they killed in an encounter as an armed rebel. They have also said they will hold those responsible for what happened accountable; something we have yet to see.

The commander of the 88th Infantry Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Arnold Bautista, said eight soldiers from the unit involved in the incident have been placed under custody and face investigation.

We understand that soldiers are always at risk of getting killed as part of their job. They cannot afford to second-guess situations where they themselves can be in danger; so they have to take what they think is the necessary action.

Except that in this situation, the necessary action taken was the wrong one, and one of the people they should have been protecting from the armed insurgency ended up dead, while another was wounded

Even as we should forgive, we should also demand for accountability and hold those liable responsible for what happened. We certainly don’t want something like this happening again.

Of course, this also leads us to wonder if everyone who was killed in an “encounter” with the military in the past were actually insurgents or just people in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like what happened here.