Soldiers Still Target Children

Soldiers Still Target Children

 According to the Katungod-SB report, a soldier acting as team leader interrogated the children, asking them if they have a gun. When the children answered no, the soldier accused them of lying.

By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – When President Benigno Simeon Aquino announced a new counter-insurgency program in place called Oplan Bayanihan, respecting human rights was said to be one of its biggest changes from the one it replaced, the bloody Oplan Bantay-Laya. In the last few months though, rights advocates noted that not much seems to have really changed in the military’s conduct.

For instance, last March 4 when more than 30 members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines conducted military operations in the hinterlands of Carolina village in Matuguinao, Samar, the residents reported that they were forcibly summoned to a meeting at the town plaza. They were first alerted by a five-minute gunfire, followed by soldiers burning of a house near their village.

Based on a report of the Katungod-Sinirangan Bisayas, a regional alliance for human rights in the area, the soldiers pelted with stones the houses of residents who did not immediately heed their call for a meeting. In one of the houses “visited” by soldiers to check if the residents had complied with their summons, they entered a house with four children inside, aged from four to 12 years old. The children had been left on their own because their father was picked up by the military to attend the town meeting..... MORE
Source:  Bulatlat.com

URL: http://bulatlat.com/main/2011/04/04/soldiers-still-target-children/