DATE=8/13/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=PHILIPPINES CULT (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-265404
BYLINE=KONRAD MULLER
DATELINE=MANILA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: On the main southern Philippine island of
Mindanao, the government armed forces are searching
for fanatical Christian cult members
who clashed violently with the authorities Friday,
leaving 20 people dead. As Konrad Muller reports from
Manila, members of the sect are believed to have
broken into small groups.
TEXT: Police and military sources say the ranks of the
Catholic "God's Spirit" sect had numbered no more than
100 before Friday's bloodbath. Sixteen cult members
were killed, as well as three local militiamen and
their civilian guide who were hacked to death.
Check points have now been thrown up in the district
of Pangantucan, and elsewhere in Bukidnon province, as
the army searches for fugitive cult members, who, the
authorities say,
have dispersed.
Friday's violence began when police, soldiers, and
militiamen, tried to serve a warrant of arrest for
murder on cult leader, Roberto Madrina Junior. He had
refused to surrender Thursday, the police say.
The sect had prepared an ambush however, and attacked
with machetes and homemade guns. In the ugly fighting
that followed, Mr. Madrina was reportedly left among
the dead, as government troops shot at cult members
with high-powered rifles.
The Catholic "God's Spirit" is said to be one of
Mindanao's tad-tad, or chop-chop, Christian sects, so-
called because of their history of butchering their
enemies with machetes.
The tad-tad groups first acquired notoriety in the
1970s, when the Muslim separatist rebellion originally
flared in the Philippine south. Christians who had
settled in Mindanao from
elsewhere in the country reportedly were well
represented among the founders.
Human rights activists then alleged the cults were
used as vigilante forces against Muslim insurgents and
Communist guerrillas. With the recent return of
guerrilla war to the country's south, concerns have
again revived over a possible renewal of Christian
vigilante groups and of their excesses. (Signed)
NEB/KM/PLM
13-Aug-2000 06:46 AM EDT (13-Aug-2000 1046 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
