NPA Turns Abductors of Young Woman in Davao
Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project
It is very sad to read reports that suggest Rebelyn Pitao’s own father might be behind last Friday’s abduction of a 21-year-old woman in Paquibato District, Davao City.
The woman –the same age as Rebelyn- was reportedly seized at gunpoint by members of the New People’s Army Front 52 at the command of Commander Parago a.k.a Leoncio Pitao.
NPA political director Ka Simon Santiago who we quoted in our own investigation into Rebelyn’s abduction, torture, rape and killing was quoted by the Mindanao Daily Mirror quoting a local radio station as saying the named woman who worked in a sari-sari (variety) store was “arrested” by the NPA for “crimes she had committed against the underground movement.”
This is NPA shorthand for saying she is a suspected police or military informer and the report goes on to say she will be provided a lawyer and put on trial in an NPA court and that her rights will be “respected.”
That said, it seems like she has already been found “guilty.” Some justice.
The problem is of course, that the NPA has neither the power of arrest, nor the mandate to take anybody into custody –let alone the authority to run their “own courts” and hand out their own brand of justice whatever it may be.
That was pretty much the problem and thinking of with those who abducted, tortured and killed poor Rebelyn in the first place. Those twisted people probably imagine that their own ideology somehow gave them the right to abandon all humanity and serve out their own style of “justice” in the back of that white van we are all still hunting.
The level of inhumanity and justice shown her cannot ever justify abducting and threatening the safety of another: Just as those gunmen had absolutely no defense or justification in doing what they did to Rebelyn, neither do those who have just abducted an alleged military agent.
If this report is indeed true, it is deeply sad and shocking and the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project will be looking to put these allegations to Commander Parago in the coming days.
Read the Daily Mirror story here.
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