Militants, Reds ‘conditionally’ trust DOJ’s Mindoro probe

Mainstream militant groups, along with the underground communist movement, have expressed their "conditional" trust on the Department of Justice’s investigation into the April 21 kidnapping-murders of two human rights activists in Oriental Mindoro.

The militant party-list group Bayan Muna, which has three sectoral representatives in the Lower House, has urged Malacañang to compel the officers of the 204th Infantry Brigade based in Oriental Mindoro to cooperate with the five-man probe team headed by Justice Undersecretary Jose Calida.

Caloocan City councilor Nathaniel Santiago, Bayan Muna secretary-general, said the "basic reason" why the 204th IB is being linked to the murders of peasant leader Eduardo Gumanoy and human rights activist Eden Marcellana is because "the DOJ has already established the probable motive behind the killings."

At the time they were abducted and killed in Gloria, Mindoro Oriental, Gumanoy and Marcellana were with 20 other members of a fact-finding mission looking into alleged human rights violations by the 204th IB in the course of its counter-insurgency operations in the province.

The ski-mask wearing men who abducted Gumanoy and Marcellana claimed they were members of the anti-communist vigilante group Alsa Masa.

Calida earlier had ruled out the possible role of vigilantes in the killings. The left-leaning Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, of which Gumanoy was a national council member, also denied the existence of such vigilantes in Oriental Mindoro. — Benjie Villa