“Have you seen the video? But you should not. You wouldn’t want to see how gruesome their deaths have been,” he said.

But being the stubborn me, I still did.

Before I slept last night, I earned every courage I could get from my body to sign in with my Google account just to verify my age and watch the videos of what happened after the “encounter.”

Then tears abruptly flowed, anger built up once again, and I remembered how lucky we were back in July when another rebel group nearly did the same.

The questions of, WHY WERE THEY SHOT IN THE EYES AS IF A GUN WAS DIRECTLY HELD AT THEM?

WHY WERE SOME OF THEM LAID NAKED?

WHERE WERE THEIR GUNS? THEIR UNIFORMS? THEIR COMBAT BOOTS, THEIR PROTECTORS AND SHIELD AGAINST THE RAGING BULLETS?

Misencounter, huh?

It was an open field and it was on midnight, for crying out loud! And even without the full knowledge of combat preparations and everything, one knows that they will not attack without a plan, as it has been said that the area is a kill-zone, a rebel infested territory, a place regarded with red flags.

They knew, they knew it all along. That going there armed or not, they will be trapped. That wherever directions they try to escape, they will not be able to do so. It wasn’t called a kill-zone for nothing, right?

They knew, they knew it all along. That the mission will trigger territorial disputes, that going against the treaty meant following orders from authority.

They knew, they knew it all along. That the mission was dangerous and risking their lives meant never returning home again.

They knew, they knew it all along. That they are the Tagaligtas, the protectors.. and they did their job pretty well that they ended up mercilessly killed.

Who, in the right mind, will do that to his fellowman?

They were robbed of their guns and their supplies but what’s more infuriating is that they were robbed of their freedom; robbed with their human rights; robbed with their lives.

They were robbed. And the President not even had the slightest bit of decency to attend their arrival honors. He robbed them of the respect from the person who could have shown even a fake kind of mourning.

The fallen 44 were betrayed and the man with the ‘symbolic’ ribbon colored yellow is hiding under the skirts of his ‘abiding the law’ principle.

They were robbed. Mercilessly robbed. And no one could bring their stolen lives back. They were robbed.