Maguindanao del Sur Gov. Datu Ali Midtimbang has offered a cash reward of P100,000 for any information that would identify and arrest the suspects in the beheading of an Indigenous Peoples’ (IP) elder on Tuesday, Sept. 30.
Midtimbang offered the reward money in a meeting on Friday, Oct 3, with police and military authorities in the province after gunmen attacked and killed Rommel ‘Nel’ Lupos, former village councilman of Barangay Mantao and tribal elder of the Teduray Lambangian people in Barangay Limpongo, Datu Hoffer town, Maguindanao del Sur.
Lupos was resting in his nipa hut in his farm lot in Barangay Limpongo when unidentified gunmen arrived and shot him. Relatives, worried for his failure to return home in the village center, launched a search and found him beheaded just outside his nipa hut.
The governor has personally handed over financial assistance to Lupos’ wife and children, who came to see him after the incident.
Midtimbang also directed the police and military to put up checkpoints in the villages of IPs to protect them from harassment by gunmen out to take over their ancestral lands. Timuay Leticio Datuwata, head of the Timuay Justice and Governance, the indigenous political structure of the Teduray-Lambangian tribe, said Lupos was killed for his refusal to vacate his farm lot as what the gunmen had been telling the IPs in the mountains of Datu Hoffer.
Midtimbang also urged the IP communities in Barangays Limpongo and Mantao to avoid establishing their homes away from each other.
‘It is better if your houses are close to each other so it would be easy for the police and military to protect you,’ Midtimbang said during an emergency peace and order council meeting.