Remains of 75 NPA victims unearthed

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY — Soldiers discovered the skeletal remains of 75 men, women and children in Misamis Oriental, 15 years after communist rebels allegedly launched a bloody purge of suspected informers, officials said yesterday.

A military report said soldiers dug up the bones Tuesday in a remote area in Opol town after a witness to some of the killings led soldiers to the eight mass graves.

The report said the killings were part of "Operation Zombie," an alleged campaign by the communist New People’s Army in the mid-1980s to execute alleged spies and government informers. "Zombie" is rebel slang for a suspected military informer.

The Army said the victims included at least two children who were executed along with their parents. Many were severely beaten and then buried alive in the sand of a former quarry which is now overgrown with jungle, the report said.

Eduardo Bitaugan, who led the police to the graves, told reporters he saw rebels in the area beat to death several people in 1985 and 1986.

"I saw the NPA take five men and two women to near the site and they told them to wait," Bitaugan said. "One by one, their names were called. They were hit with a crow bar and with shovels."

The military report quoted Bitaugan as saying that women were killed through "the unorthodox method of pulling out something from their sexual organs with the use of forceps."

Bitaugan identified one of the skeletal remains to belong to his relative Jesus Madrino based on the striped t-shirt and pair of red short pants he was wearing before he was shot.

Maj. Johnny Macanas, spokesman of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, said the remains will be reburied in public cemeteries in Opol.

The remains of a total of 500 people have been discovered in the area in recent years but authorities suspect more than 4,500 are still buried in mass graves.

In recent years, mass graves have been unearthed in Cagayan de Oro, Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur and the Misamis Oriental towns of Salay, Lagonglong, Balingasag and Claveria.

The government and communist rebels are currently discussing details of possible peace talks. The NPA has been fighting a Marxist war to overthrow the government for nearly three decades.

The rebels pulled out of earlier peace talks, with former President Joseph Estrada, nearly two years ago after the Senate approved the Visiting Forces Agreement allowing large-scale US military exercises in the Philippines.

President Arroyo has ordered a partial ceasefire in 11 provinces in Southern Luzon with the NPA to help promote talks with the communists.

Arroyo also ordered a unilateral ceasefire with another rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is fighting for a separate Islamic homeland in Mindanao.

Peace talks with that group are expected to resume soon. — Lino de la Cruz, Paolo Romero