Gonzales: Don’t politicize killings; NBI probes Surigao slay

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has directed its Caraga office to investigate last Sunday’s killing of a religious leader in Surigao del Sur.

The NBI has also stepped into the case of slain Aglipayan Bishop Alberto Ramento to clarify, once and for all, if his killing was politically motivated or not.

Reynaldo Esmeralda, NBI deputy director for regional operations, said he has instructed the agency’s Tarlac office to ask the four arrested suspects if they had been instructed to rob and kill 69-year-old Ramento, who chaired the supreme council of bishops of Iglesia Filipina Independiente.

"This is just to clear the air and remove speculations that the crime was politically motivated," he said.

Although police insisted that the case was a mere robbery with homicide, religious and militant leaders claimed that Ramento could have been killed because he was an active human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Arroyo administration.

Amid these claims, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales appealed to human rights and leftist groups not to politicize the killings of Ramento and 53-year-old Fr. Dionisio Estrada Gingging, who belonged to the "Church of the Body of Christ," which a former Aglipayan priest had founded.

Gonzales said the killings appeared to be unrelated and were purely "police matters" and that leftist groups were taking advantage of the situation.

He said the communists have realized that blaming the government for the spate of what they alleged to be extrajudicial killings has become a "major tool" to destabilize the Arroyo administration.

Gingging was shot and stabbed dead inside his farmhouse in Barangay Bajao in Tago, Surigao del Sur last Sunday morning.

Although he turned out not to be an Aglipayan priest as earlier reported, religious leaders in the Caraga region condemned his murder.

"The killing has to be condemned and the perpetrators penalized accordingly," said Butuan Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos in a text message to The STAR.

Pueblos is a member of the Melo Commission probing the killings of activists and journalists.

Although clarifying that Gingging was not an official member of their religious group, Fr. Manuel Cruz, a senior priest of the Surigao del Sur Aglipayan Church, said, "Still we are praying for justice and for the real perpetrators to be put behind bars."

Cruz said Gingging belonged to the "Church of the Body of Christ" put up by a certain Fr. Duatin, a former Aglipayan priest, who had assigned him to be the sect’s priest in Tago town.

Senior Superintendent Alex Ga, Surigao del Sur police director, added that Gingging was a faith healer and a top member of the Philippine Benevolent Missionary Association, to which Ga also belongs. The PBMA considers Ruben Ecleo, detained in Cebu on parricide charges, as its supreme master.

Cruz said they believe though that Gingging’s killing was not politically motivated because "he (was) not involved in political and socio-religious activities."

Police said three men attacked Gingging while he was on his way to his piggery in Tago town. He sustained four wounds from a homemade shotgun as well as hack wounds from a bolo locally known as sungdangay.

Three witnesses, including Gingging’s mother Ponciana and 12-year-old daughter Milagros, told police the attackers later rushed to their house and carted away seven religious icons and bottles of medicinal oil.

Close relatives of Gingging suspect that his killing could have something to do with his logging business. — Ben Serrano, Evelyn Macairan, Paolo Romero, Ric Sapnu and Edu Punay