ILOILO City – The human rights group Panay Alliance Karapatan is demanding an investigation on the death of a member of the Sangguniang Barangay of Onop, Miag-ao, Iloilo, John Farochilin, also the chairperson of Alyansa sang mga Mangunguma sa Miag-ao.
The Philippine Army claimed that Farochilin, the person killed by the 61st Infantry (Hunter) Battalion on April 18 in Barangay Cabalaunan, Miag-ao, and the 11 others arrested and detained, were members of the New People’s Army (NPA), and that the minors among the group were “child warriors” recruited by the rebels.
“At this point, taking the statements of the 61st IB and the Philippine Army at face value would not only be misguided, but outright foolish,” according to Reylan B. Vergara, secretary-general of Panay Alliance Karapatan.
The Army’s claim had been flat-out denied by the families of the detainees, the barangay officials, and the teachers of the schools they attended, all of whom insisted that they were unarmed civilians, he pointed out.
Farochilin, according to Vergara, was a known peasant leader who had actively campaigned for farmers’ rights – even meeting, only recently, with the Commission on Human Rights to discuss partnering with the said agency for a public education campaign on human rights issues and to air concerns of violations committed by government troops.
“If anything, the members of the 61st IB who were involved in the April 18 operation should be investigated for Farochilin’s death, the motive to kill him being quite apparent,” said Vergara.
The human rights leader noted that since the unit’s deployment in Panay Island, the 61st IB has been implicated in various allegations of human rights violations – ranging from warrantless search of homes to the planting of evidence, illegal arrests, and even the death of two farmers in Maayon, Capiz back in 2017.
“In all these cases, the 61st IB uniformly claimed that the victims were members of the NPA, seemingly shielding its members from any proper inquiry into the matter. To a large extent, this tack has been successful and the alleged perpetrators have escaped accountability,” according to Vergara.
A transparent investigation into the killing of Farochilin and the arrest and detention of the 11 detainees should be carried out, he stressed.
“Continuing to accept the Philippine Army’s narrative of events with little or no discernment is the surest formula for impunity. It disregards the fact that, under both domestic and international law, civilians and even suspected rebels enjoy protection against arbitrary and excessive action and the unnecessary use of violence by security forces. Worse, it ensures that heinous crimes and abuses committed by soldiers against civilians living in rural areas – such as those reported on April 18 – will continue unabated and unscrutinized,” Vergara warned./PN
