"A peasant farmer was killed by soldiers from the 57th Infantry Battalion ... [who] fired at Batoy’s house, his wife Gina, who is six months old pregnant, and their two children, [who] were able to escape," reports HumanRightsPhilippines.net.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Roy Bagtikan Gallego was scheduled to launch anew radio station program a few days before he was gunned down by men on motorcycle on October 14." The Director-General of UNESCO has condemned his death.
GMA News reports that "Tentorio was shot and killed by a lone gunman inside the compound of the Mother of Perpetual Help parish church in Arakan at around 7:30 a.m. on Monday."
There has been widespread condemnation by environmentalists, religious organizations, journalists, indigenous people's groups, and international human rights solidarity networks.
The Asia Indigenous People's Pact reports that a Dumagat tribal member was abducted by unidentified armed persons believed to be affiliated with the military.
ABC News reports that "four soldiers in the Philippines have been arrested for setting a man on fire they wrongly suspected of being an Islamic militant, the military said Monday, branding it an "inhumane act of torture". The soldiers tortured the man to force him to confess he was a member of the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group, which has been blamed for the country's worst terror attacks, according to the military's human rights office." Read the rest of the article.
Democracy, according to the late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, is "a question of human dignity, [a]nd human dignity is political freedom, the right to freely express opinion and the right to be allowed to criticise and form opinions."
But exercising political freedom in the Philippines, which purports itself to be a democracy, can lead to death. Since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the presidency of the country in 2001, more than 800 Filipinos murdered in politically-motivated, extra-judicial, targeted killings. Since the 4th quarter of July 2005, one person has been killed every two days. The victims of these brazen acts of violence were all unarmed citizens: lawyers, judges, journalists, medical practitioners, members of cause-oriented groups, priests, church-workers, human rights advocates, laborers and farmers.
It is widely believed—and the United Nations support this belief—that state security forces are complicit in these crimes.
