ARMM assures prosecution of culprits in Lanao Sur killings

WAO, Lanao del Sur -- The families of the six villagers killed in a spate of related attacks last week in this town are seeking help in prosecuting the culprits whom they believe are just roaming freely in the municipality.Vice Gov. Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) on Friday said he had talked to elders of the victims and convinced them to refrain from retaliating and let the agencies investigating on the incidents finish their separate inquiries in preparation for the filing of criminal charges against the criminals.Lucman was in Wao last Thursday to supervise a 20-member relief group from the regional government’s Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) that extended assistance to the families of the slain villagers and barangay folks dislocated by the atrocities.Lucman said the ARMM police headquarters, the Regional Human Rights Commission, and the inter-agency regional peace and order council, which is chaired by the region’s chief executive, Gov. Mujiv Hataman, are now cooperating in identifying the people behind the killings. The ARMM government is keen on exhausting its powers and connections to ensure the prosecution of the people responsible for the deaths of these Wao residents. They must be placed behind bars,” Lucman said.The killings started with the brutal murder on April 24 of two Visayan children by cattle thieves that took with them as they escaped the farm animals both victims were watching over while grazing in a pasture area.Masked men, armed with assault rifles and shoulder-fire 40 millimeter grenades, on April 25 attacked a barangay where the suspects were said to have come from, killing four ethnic Maranaws, one of them a pregnant woman.Nine other Maranaw villagers were wounded in the attack.Lucman and HEART workers, led by Ramil Masukat and Myrna Jocelyn Henry, had also visited the injured victims in hospitals were they are presently undergoing medication.Through HEART, Hataman's office gave P20,000 to each of the families of the slain Maranaw and Visayan villagers, P30,000 to each of the gunshot victims admitted in hospitals and P15,000 each to villagers wounded in the shooting frenzy but released from confinement after receiving first aid.Lucman, himself an ethnic Maranaw, said he had assured Pangalian Sumayan, who lost two children in the attack by gunmen, that the ARMM government will help prosecute the people responsible for the deaths of the Visayan and Maranaw villagers. The families of the victims want justice and we are here to help. We asked them to remain sober and to prosecute the perpetrators of these killings properly. They asked for help and help shall come to them,” Lucman said.Lucman said Hataman had earlier ordered the ARMM police headquarters to file criminal charges against the suspects immediately after probers have gathered all the needed statements of survivors and potential witnesses to be used as basis in court proceedings.The HEART contingent dispatched to Wao on Thursday also dispersed food and other relief provisions to dozens of Maranaw and Visayan villagers dislocated by the bloody incidents.The HEART, operating under Hataman’s ministerial control, is comprised of volunteers from the ARMM’s social welfare, health and public works departments.Reports obtained by the HEART from the office of Wao Mayor Elvino Balicao indicated that the violent incidents displaced 1,115 Maranaw and Visayan villagers.The evacuees were forced to abandon their homes by stories and text messages purporting that armed men were to attack their farming enclaves to avenge the deaths of the Maranaws killed by gunmen a day after the murder of the two Visayan adolescents in a pasture area in west of Wao.There are talks spreading in Wao that the masked men involved in the attack that left four Maranaws dead and nine others wounded were militiamen identified with certain local officials.There are Maranaw and Visayan families in Wao that are locked in land disputes, squabbling for control of strategic patches of farmlands in hinterland districts in the municipality.