A human rights group has called on the police and military to release the body of a female farmworker who was killed during a December 17 shootout in Baras, Rizal.
According to Karapatan, the Baras Municipal Police Station has refused to release Vilma Salabao’s remains to her bereaved family.
Salabao was one of the five farmworkers at a private mango farm in Barangay San Juan who had been tagged as communist rebels and shot dead by authorities.
The group identified the other slain farmworkers based on morgue records as Wesley Obmerga, Carlito Zonio, Jhonatan, and Niño Alberga.
They were killed when joint police and military operatives went to the area to serve the warrant of arrest against Antonio Cule, an alleged finance officer of the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippine (CPP).
“We call on the police and the military to release Salabao’s remains and to let her family grieve for her death,” Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said.
Karapatan’s local chapter in Southern Tagalog had sent a fact-finding mission to look into the killings of the five farmworkers in Baras.
Families of the four men had already recovered their bodies and buried them, but Salabao’s body remains at the morgue under police custody.
Karapatan said the bodies of the male farmworkers bore “signs of torture and mutilitation,” citing their teeth were removed and their hands pounded. The testicles of the Alberga brothers were also burned, it said.
Residents told the fact-finding mission team the victims cried for help upon arrival of the State forces, belying its claim of a shootout.
Palabay also said residents expressed surprise at accusations that the slain farmworkers were communist rebels.
