Teduray chieftain in BARMM beheaded by gunmen

Content warning: Graphic violence

COTABATO CITY— Gunmen beheaded a Teduray chieftain in another attack in a state-recognized non-Moro tribal domain in Datu Hoffer, Maguindanao del Sur, on Tuesday afternoon, September 30.

Teduray representatives to the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament and officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region told reporters on Wednesday, October 1, that Ramon Lupos, a timuay, or chieftain, was to harvest bananas in his farm in Sitio Kulab in Barangay Limpongo when gunmen flagged him down, hit him with pieces of wood on the head and then one of them cut his neck with a machete.

Citing reports by his subordinate officers in Maguindanao del Sur, Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said the armed men behind the atrocity immediately escaped, now the subject of an extensive manhunt.

Lupos was the 87th Teduray tribal leader killed brutally in Maguindanao del Sur since 2019, all unsolved.

A Teduray member of the Bangsamoro parliament, Froilyn Mendoza, and tribal leaders in two towns where they have bastions, Upi in Maguindanao del Norte and South Upi in Maguindanao del Sur, have urged the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office and PRO-BAR to exhaust all means of identifying the assailants of Lupos for prosecution.

He was the second tribal leader in Datu Hoffer, killed and decapitated by gunmen within just 11 months. Three others were killed in gun attacks in different areas in the municipality in the past three years.