Bulatlat reports: "Two residents of Pangarap Village in Caloocan City were killed when security guards opened fire at a vigil site set up by residents protesting against the demolition in the area. Soliman Gomez and Rommel Fortadez died and six others were injured." Read the rest of the article.
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Bulatlat reports: "Roque Laputan, 59, a member of Anakpawis partylist, Davao del Sur, was murdered by unidentified men, July 10. Laputan, was at the forefront of protests against the operation of Xstrata-owned Sagittarius Mines Inc. in Davao del Sur and the company’s plan to put up a coal-fired plant here." Read the rest of the article.
The leader of an indigenous group in Agusan Del Sur, Arpe Belayong, was killed along with his 21-year old nephew Solte San-ogan were reported to have been killed by a paramilitary group. "Belayong was reportedly killed because of his refusal to sign a document on ancestral domain. His signature was needed so loggers could start operations within their ancestral domain," notes Bulatlat.com. Six human rights defenders have since then gone into hiding out of fear from this particular attack, reports the Asia Indigenous Peoples' Pact. This case has been recorded in detail by Karapatan.org.
The Inquirer reports that "the UCCP is asking Arroyo, now a representative of her home province of Pampanga, to pay at least P5 million for human-rights abuses allegedly committed against six leaders of the group during her administration". Read the rest of the story.
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The Philippine Inquirer reports: "Environment Secretary Ramon Paje recently expressed concern over the number of forest workers, whether volunteers or employed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), threatened, harassed and killed in the line of duty... The latest fatality was Rolando Sinday, a forest ranger in Surigao del Sur who was gunned down by masked motorcycle-riding men while on his way home last month." 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.
