A murder and an abduction in Northern Samar

Ruth Gecaro, barangay treasurer of Somoroy, Lope de Vega, in Northern Samar, was supposed to provide witnesses to a fact-finding team on the murder of Father Cecilio Lucero, the parish priest of Catubig, Northern Samar. Two days before the fact-finding team arrived in Samar, Gecaro was abducted by men believed to be soldiers. She remains missing.

Gecaro’s disappearance and the murder itself of Father Lucero, a known human-rights advocate, highlights the worsening human-rights violations in that province.

Read the report by Bulatlat’s Cebu correspondent Ritche Salgado, who covered the fact-finding mission earlier this month in Northern Samar.

Read or download the report of the fact-finding mission. In it, the mission linked the murder of Father Lucero and the abduction of Gecaro to the military’s Oplan Bantay Laya.