Neophyte cops injured in brutal Basilan ‘reception rite’

COTABATO CITY — Officials of the Bangsamoro regional police have vowed to prosecute a group of policemen involved in a brutal “reception rite” in Lamitan City in Basilan last week for 114 neophyte colleagues that left many of them injured.

Brigadier General Jaysen C. De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO-BAR), was in Lamitan City on Sunday to personally investigate the incident that many local executives in the province condemned via social media.

“Under the principles of command responsibility, negligent supervisors will face administrative sanctions and appropriate charges shall be filed against those involved,” Mr. De Guzman said on Monday, referring to the incident.

The victims of the violent reception rite were new members of PRO-BAR’s Regional Mobile Force Battalion (RMFB) 14, mostly from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, recently trained and admitted into the Philippine National Police as part of the erstwhile rebel group’s 2014 truce with the national government.

The RMFB 14 is a rapid deployment law-enforcement unit of PRO-BAR, whose regional headquarters is in Camp SK Pendatun in Parang town in Maguindanao del Norte, less than 40 kilometers from Cotabato City, capital of the Bangsamoro region.

Local officials in Basilan said on Monday that two of those mauled and whipped with sticks by colleagues senior to them in the service, lost consciousness and were immediately brought to a hospital for treatment.

Many others have contusions and scratches in different parts of their bodies caused by the maltreatment by their companions in the RMFB 14, now detained, awaiting administrative litigation for their offense. — John Felix M. Unson