Another ethnic Teduray chieftain killed in Central Mindanao

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Gunmen killed a Teduray leader in an ambush in the upland South Upi town in Maguindanao del Sur on Friday afternoon, July 25.

The slain Nicasio Mindo is the 87th traditional community figurehead of the Teduray tribe murdered in attacks in different Central Mindanao towns since 2018.

Local executives and officials of the South Upi Municipal Police Station told reporters on Saturday, July 26, that Mindo and his wife Dindin, also a Teduray, were together in their red multicab, on their way somewhere, when they were attacked by gunmen at a stretch of a highway in Sitio Lenan in Barangay Romongaob.

Mindo died instantly from bullet wounds sustained in the ambush that left his spouse wounded.

Their assailants immediately escaped using getaway motorcycles, according to barangay officials and investigators from the South Upi municipal police who responded to the incident.

Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, had ordered the officials of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office and their subordinate-officers assigned to South Upi to enlist the help of local officials and Teduray chieftains in putting a closure to the atrocity.

Records from police and Army units in Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte provinces in the Bangsamoro region and in nearby towns in Sultan Kudarat in Region 12 indicate that 87 Teduray tribal leaders had been killed, including Mindo, in one attack after another since 2018, all unresolved.

Like Mindo, most of the slain Teduray leaders were vocal about the wanton intrusion of heavily armed non-Tedurays into their state-recognized ancestral domains, forcibly taking over rice and cornfields of native inhabitants relying mainly on farming as means of livelihood.

Froilyn Tenorio Mendoza, representative of the Teduray community in the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, has condemned the fatal ambush of Mindo and urged the police and military to identify the culprits for prosecution.

“The incident is very saddening for us,” Mendoza told reporters.

A Teduray chieftain, Leticio Datuwata, chief of their tribe’s Justice and Governance Group, said they want officials of the Bangsamoro regional government to help them address the security threats besetting their community, which had lost many tribal leaders to gun attacks in recent years.