A tribe has called for the Philippine government to investigate its claims that stolen ancestral remains were to be sold to people linked to a Japanese nonprofit organization involved in collecting the remains of Japanese soldiers, an official said.
Romeo Morente of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples said Friday the Tokyo-based group, Kuentai, is included in a complaint lodged Wednesday by a Mangyan subtribe in the province of Oriental Mindoro.
Kuentai has been commissioned by the Japanese government to assist in the retrieval of the skeletal remains of Japanese soldiers who perished in the Philippines in World War II.
The three-page complaint accuses Kuentai's local representative and two officials of the National Museum of the Philippines, among others, of being "involved in the theft of bones of their (Mangyan) ancestors."
The complaint stems from the arrest in June of three Mangyan tribal members on suspicion of stealing ancestral remains from their tribe's burial caves.
The complaint says the three intended to sell the remains to Filipino agents hired by Kuentai under the false claim of being the skeletal remains of Japanese soldiers.