by Romel Regalado Bagares

COTABATO CITY.–Peruvian forensic anthropologist Dr. Jose Pablo Baraybar didn’t like what he saw when he visited for the first time Sunday the massacre site in Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town.

“It reminded me of something—it’s just like Rwanda,” said Dr. Baraybar after spending a few hours in the area in the company of Commission on Human Rights Chair Leila M. De Lima, British forensic investigator Chris Cobb Smith and lawyers from the Center for International Law (Centerlaw).

Baraybar said the “topography of the crime” in Ampatuan town is eerily similar to that he had found as a United Nations expert serving in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Barren hills, marked in places by an occasional clump of nipa huts, flanked a narrow dirt road that led to the scene of the carnage that claimed the lives of at least 57 people, including at least 29 journalists.

As he surveyed the area, Baraybar shook his head, remarking, “This is exactly the kind of topography that unfortunately provides an incentive for acts of impunity—its sheer remoteness keeps away public attention.”

In 1994, the genocide in Rwanda broke out and saw the systematic killing of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in less than 100 days by the Hutus…

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