MARAWI CITY (MindaNews / 22 October — Only seven.
Of 273 decomposed bodies recovered from ‘Ground Zero’ in Marawi in 2017 that were processed for identification through DNA matching, only 192 samples were deemed viable for examination and only seven or 3.6% have been identified and matched with the DNA of living relatives.
As more remains were unearthed from Ground Zero after 2017, the number of the unidentified dead buried in the Maqbara cemetery here had risen from 273 in 2017 to 282 by May 2019. When MindaNews visited on Monday, October 17, 2022, the last remains buried there, according to the small concrete markers painted in white, was number 329.
The concrete markers were installed last year by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) which has been assisting Marawi residents in their search for their loved ones who remain missing five years after then President Rodrigo Duterte declared Marawi “liberated from the terrorist influence” on October 17, 2017.
A marker in granite was installed by representatives of civil society here on May 23, 2019, the second anniversary of Day 1 of the Marawi Siege, in memory of those “who have fallen during the Marawi Siege (May 23 to October 17, 2017) and yet to be identified and named.”
“We remember, we never forget!,” it added.
At that time, the graves were “identified” only through the white-painted markers made of plywood, bearing coded numbers and dates when they were retrieved, awaiting the day the results of the DNA matching with relatives will be released so they can be claimed by their loved ones or be properly marked where they are buried now on this patch of land.
Who are buried here? Civilians who may be Muslims or non-Muslims, and combatants from the Maute Group and its allies.
Cemetery caretaker Somagayan Puno on May 23, 2019 said they buried the 282nd remains retrieved from a demolition site in Ground Zero, just before Ramadan started on May 6.
There was no marker for the 282nd grave then. Just a long stick to indicate where the skeletal remains were buried.
Several concrete markers now bear only the number of the grave, some of them covered by grass. No other details, no dates of retrieval. Grave 329 contains the remains of somebody retrieved from Ground Zero on October 23, 2021.
Reliving the trauma
In 2019, Norsalima Abdurahman, then 17, was still waiting for the DNA typing results that would lead her to the graves of her father, Usman, brother Alinor-Mayor and sister Sittie Ainah if at all they are buried in this cemetery (her mother passed away in Baclaran years earlier).
Speaking on behalf of Norsalima, her uncle Adman Poro Tomawis Rasuman, issued a call for justice for those who lost their loved ones in Ground Zero.
Rasuman told MindaNews on October 18 that he has not received any word on the results of the DNA testing.
He said Norsalima has not received any financial assistance, not even for education. He recalled instances where she was offered a scholarship but did not push through as she could not produce the required death certificate of her father.
Without the DNA matching results, her father and two siblings will continue to be classified as “missing.” She will have to wait for another two years of by 2024 to complete seven years for them to be legally presumed dead.
RA 11696 or the Marawi Siege Victims Compensation Act, provides that the heirs of those who died and legally presumed dead “are also entitled to compensation.”
Rasuman said several agencies have been interviewing Norsalima “at napagod na din yung bata kaya ayaw na niya humarap sa mga agency at bumabalik lang daw ang mga alaala niya sa pamilya niya” (and the girl is exhausted and does not want to face the agencies anymore because she keeps reliving the trauma of losing her loved ones).
Rasuman sought refuge in Cagayan de Oro City during the siege. He said he has returned to Marawi and has spent the cash assistance from government on house rentals. Home-based internally displaced persons (IDPs), he lamented, are the most neglected IDPs.
Dead and missing
Government records at the end of the war in 2017 put the death toll at 1,206.
The Task Force Bangon Marawi’s (TFBM) April 30, 2022 report, citing reports by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP) and TFBM’s Working Group on the Management of the Dead and the Missing (MDM) said the five-month war resulted to 1,206 dead (168 government security forces, 924 from the Maute Group and allies, and 114 civilians, 94 of whom died in hospitals while 20 died “in the early stages of the Siege.”
The Working Group on the MDM is headed by the Department of Interior and Local Government.
It is not clear how many civilians actually died in Ground Zero. Fr. Teresito Soganub, who was one of at least a hundred Marawi residents held hostage for at least three months, told MindaNews in 2017 that several hostages were killed, including his parish workers, during military bombings or in crossfires. Some hostages were also forced to carry firearms and fight, he said. Soganub succumbed to cardiac arrest on July 22, 2020.
It is not also clear exactly how many combatants from the Maute Group and its allies were killed. The number 924 does not match with the number of dead bodies and remains retrieved from the war zone.
According to the Project Completion Report of the DNA Testing submitted by the PNP, a total of 273 pieces of evidence comprising bone samples, soft tissues, dentures, and clothing from victims of Marawi Siege were submitted to the PNP Crime Laboratory DNA Laboratory Division from 14 July 2017 to 09 January 2020. The report also noted 83 reference samples or buccal swabs from relatives in search of 71 missing individuals but only seven matched. (Carolyn O. Arguillas / MindaNews)
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