A parade snaked through the streets of Davao City last week, but the occasion was hardly festive. As thousands of residents on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao watched, the marchers carried 105 white wooden coffins containing the remains of civilians said to have been murdered by the Communist-led New People's Army. Headed by Army Lieut. Colonel Franco Calida, the procession included 3,000 members of the Alsa Masa, one of more than a score of private paramilitary groups that are waging war against the N.P.A. Every so often, pallbearers opened a coffin and showed the remains to onlookers, who craned their...
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