By BEN SERRANO
Correspondent
TANDAG City -A multisectoral group helping indigenes who evacuated here has expressed disappointment over the absence of a report on a Senate committee inquiry on the killings that resulted in evacuations here since September 2015.
Senators came here in Oct. 1-2 last year to look into the killings and the evacuations from Barangay Diatagon, Lianga, Surigao del Sur .
Until now, some 2,000 indigenes who evacuated are still staying at the Provincial Sports Complex.
Last year, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III and the then senator Teofisto Guingona III promised that justice would come for the victims of the killings even as they urged authorities to arrest some 23 suspects allegedly headed by brothers Bobby and Loloy Tejero and Margarito Layno.
The suspects are said to belong to a Magahat armed group blamed for the killing of tribal leader Dionel Campos, Aurelio Sinzo and Alcadev school director Emerico Samarca.
The Caraga-based multisectoral group said follow-ups were made but nothing has come out of the Senate committee inquiry until now.
“It was all for a show. Almost one year has passed and the three prime suspects and their armed 23 other companions remained at large,” said lumad leader Bae Tenia Garay, chairperson of lumad group Mapasu.
Garay said over 2,000 evacuees were reluctant to go home because the suspects are still roaming around freely.
Garay joined a multisectoral group composed of UCCP Bishop Modesto Villasanta, Alcadev acting director Maricres Pagaran, representatives of Karapatan, Kabataan, Kasalo, Caraga Watch and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers in a roundtable discussion on the situation. Members of the International Solidarity Mission (ISM) from the US, Canada, Kenya, Germany and Belgium also came.
Antonio Azarcon, a human rights lawyer and legal counsel of evacuees, said he was told by a military official that the prime suspects in the killings were “nowhere to be found and will never surrender.”
A P1.2-million reward has been raised and offered for the capture of each of the suspects by the Surigao del Sur capitol and the Department of Interior and Local Government, Azarcon said.
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