EDITORIAL - Silenced witnesses

About 200 men believed to have participated, directly or indirectly, in the Maguindanao massacre in November 2009 remain at large, with most of them not yet identified. Prosecutors had hoped Alijol Ampatuan could identify at least 36 militiamen involved in the massacre, wherein 57 victims were brutally murdered and another remains unaccounted for. The other day, however, a prosecution lawyer said it had been established that Ampatuan was murdered four months ago. He was identified at the time as Menjie Mangulamas Ubpon.

Ampatuan, a member of the clan whose patriarch and his sons are being held without bail for the massacre, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle at the public market in Shariff Aguak on Feb. 21. A witness, driver Esmael Enog, had said Ampatuan was an aide of Kanor Ampatuan, a cousin of clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr. Enog said that on the morning of the massacre, Alijol had picked up at least 36 members of the clan’s civilian volunteer organization and brought them to the site of the gruesome crime in Sitio Masalay in Ampatuan town.

Enog himself, however, was murdered two months ago, with his body found chopped to pieces in Mamasapano, Ampatuan town. He was expected to identify 32 militiamen who participated in the massacre, but he had refused to be placed under the government’s Witness Protection Program.

The killings should give more urgency to improving state protection for witnesses. At the same time, the government should exert more effort to find Ampatuan’s killers, from the triggermen on the motorcycle to the one who ordered the hit.

As in the murders of activists and journalists, failure to catch the perpetrators breeds impunity. If no one is made to answer for the murder of Ampatuan, the nation can be sure that more potential witnesses in the massacre will suffer the same fate.