Emano rejects request to identify exhumed remains of NPA victims

DAVAO CITY - Let them rest in peace.

With these words Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Vicente Emano rejected yesterday a request for the identification of the remains of at least 60 victims of New People's Army (NPA) atrocities in the eighties, which were exhumed in "killing fields" in a remote village last Saturday.

"Let it stop here. There is nothing more we can do about it," said Emano, adding that identifying the remains will be an expensive and tedious process.

Emano said in a phone interview that relatives of 20 of the victims surfaced during the funeral Mass arranged by the city government yesterday and requested him that the skeletal remains be properly identified.

The remains of at least 14 victims, however, were claimed by their relatives who said their slain kin were mostly young rebels killed by their own comrades.

The other remains were given proper burial at the city cemetery after the Mass.

Emano said the remains belonged to victims of the NPA's "Operation Zombie" in Barangay Taglimao, known to be an NPA stronghold, at the height of the communist insurgency in the 1980s.

Operation Zombie referred to the killing by the NPA of anyone, including its own guerrillas, suspected of being "deep penetration agents" of the military.

Emano ordered the exhumation of the remains last Saturday by a joint police-military team after a former NPA guerrilla surfaced and confessed about the killings.

"Our informer, whose name we still have to withhold for security reasons, was bothered by his conscience which led him to finally come out and pinpoint the mass grave," the mayor said.

Emano also turned down calls to dig up another supposed mass grave near the one which yielded the remains of the 60 NPA victims.

"I think it is best that we do not touch that grave anymore if, indeed, there is another one," he said.

Maj. Johnny Macanas, information chief of the Army's 4th Infantry Division, said charges will be filed against leaders of the NPA group responsible for the killings in Barangay Taglimao.

Macanas said authorities are now working on the arrest of these NPA leaders believed to be still residing in Misamis Oriental.

"We know who they are. We are going after them soon," he said.

Emano said the existence of the mass grave only underscores the need to work for peace.

"We cannot let this happen again. It is really a very sad thing for this to happen between and among Filipinos," he said.