TIAONG, Quezon – For two hours under the scorching noon-day sun, close to 2,000 mourners composed of students, villagers and local officials joined the burial rites for senior University of the Philippines (UP) student Chris Anthony Mendez.The 21-year-old public administration student and UP student council member was buried as his family held on to the belief that Mendez was murdered and not accidentally killed during hazing rites. Speaking in behalf of the Mendez clan, village chairman Pedro Panopio said the family could not quite grasp that their son died during hazing rites for the Sigma Rho, an established UP fraternity. “We’re still facing a blank wall as to the true cause of his death. We’re still waiting for the result of the initial investigation by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation). The NBI people told us that they would invite some people in the next few days to help shed some light to the incident,” Panopio told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net. Mendez’s mother, Christina, and kid brother, Renz, declined to be interviewed by the media. Mendez’s white coffin was carried out of their unfinished concrete house in Barangay Talisay at exactly 12 noon Sunday. Hundreds of UP students and faculty members traveled all the way from Manila to accompany Mendez in his final journey. An hour later, the funeral march reached the Blessed Virgin Mary-Queen of the World parish church in the nearby village of Lusacan. While in the church, close to 30 medals, mostly gold, adorned the top of Chris coffin serving as mute testament to his bright future. Despite the assistance provided by village police, the procession still caused a long traffic jam. Don Ado Escudero, multi-millionaire owner of the famous Villa Escudero resort here, expressed great disappointment with the early death of a well-known local boy. “Another young life was wasted in senseless hazing,” Escudero said, shaking his head in grief, as he condoled with the Mendez family before the funeral march. He lamented that Chris could have become a Tiaong leader. Escudero said he was also a fraternity man in an American university but their initiation was not physical. People lined up along the sides of the highway, some gathered under the protection of several waiting sheds along the route just to have a glimpse of the funeral march. In his homily, parish priest Fr. Noel Cabungcal recalled that 20 years ago, he was also one of the mourners in the burial rites for another hazing victim, who was his classmate in the seminary before the victim took up law in a Manila university. “My memory of that event was rekindled. Just like Chris, he died during senseless initiation rites,” the priest said. “Chris’ death could mean God’s message. The Lord wants us to realize that human life is so precious. Life has full of meaning. Man’s life is not being measured with the length of time that he stayed here on earth but on how we spend it when we were still alive,” Cabungcal said. He urged the Mendez family and friends of the departed to “leave everything to God." Lawyer Expectacion Baldeo, legal counsel of the Mendez family, said the family was groping in the dark on the details of his death last Monday (Aug. 27). "Sana makunsensiya ang mga gumawa ng krimen [We hope that those who committed the crime would heed their conscience],” she said before the throngs that filled the church. Baldeo expressed fear that a cover-up was being done to mislead investigators. “How come the death certificate of the boy stated that he died here in Tiaong?” she said. Gerarda Villa, mother of Lenny Villa, an Ateneo de Manila student who died during hazing rights 16 years ago, earlier told the Inquirer newspaper that they expected cover-up attempts in Mendez’s case. Villa, who is now president of Crusade Against Violence (CAV), recalled the struggles her family went through just to prove that Lenny’s killing was murder and not homicide. With the Anti-Hazing Law in effect, Villa said she was not surprised by the silence of some members of the UP community. “Hazing is a crime,” she said. Last Monday, the badly beaten Mendez was brought to the Veteran’s Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, but was declared dead on arrival. His remains bore bruises all over, particularly on the back of the arms and thighs. Reports pointed to members of Sigma Rho fraternity as the ones who recruited Mendez and conducted the fatal initiation rites. But the officers of the organization continued to remain silent over Mendez’s death. Villa called on all sectors of the society to unite in stopping sadistic fraternity rituals on campuses. She urged school authorities and parents to closely monitor the activities of fraternities. “This senseless hazing should stop,” she said. "They are luring their recruits by highlighting the good qualities of a fraternity but they ignore the evil side of it," she added. “I will spend the rest of my life working for the abolition of these so-called fraternities in Philippine campuses. These organizations should not be tolerated by the government and the schools,” she stressed. Mendez’s body was interred past 3 p.m. at the town public cemetery. | 
