The Philippine Army has relieved the officer who was responsible for the digitally altered photos of alleged rebel surrenderers in Masbate last month.
Lt. Col. Napoleon Pabon, commanding officer of the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the 9th Infantry Division, took responsibility for the release of the altered photos of the surrenderers, the Philippine Army disclosed Friday.
Pabon was relieved from his post effective last Tuesday.
“We hold our personnel with high esteem in all our dealings especially in our release to the media and the public. We constantly train and remind them of our policies so that everyone is knowledgeable in the proper release of information and we take this incident as a valuable experience that will enable us to better perform our mission,” said Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala, Army spokesperson.
It was not clear, however, if Pabon was the one who edited the photos.
The Army maintained that there are indeed 306 surrenderers and they are already undergoing various levels of processing under the Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program.
E-CLIP is a government intervention program which enables former rebels in their re-integration process back to the society through financial, livelihood, housing, health, and educational assistance, among others. (Martin Sadongdong)
Zagala said the former rebels received P15,000 as an immediate aid upon their surrender.
The Army was widely criticized after the 9th ID, one of its military units in the Bicol region, released a set of manipulated photos of surrenderers in Masbate.
One of the photos which accompanied a press release showed at least a dozen of surrenderers standing before a cache of high-powered firearms.
However, netizens noticed that the image of the surrenderers was superimposed on the image of the firearms, while a foot of a surrenderer was unintentionally cropped out of the photo, raising suspicions that it was edited.
