ILOILO CITY–Unidentified armed men gunned down two members of a human rights fact-finding mission and wounded another in Bayawan City in Negros Oriental on Tuesday afternoon.
The fatalities included Elisa Badayos, 59, Negros Oriental coordinator of the human rights group Karapatan, and Eleuterio Moises, a village watchman and a member of the farmers group Mantapi Ebwan Farmers Association.
The third victim, Carmen Matarlo, 22, was wounded in the shoulder and was in stable condition as of 9:30 p.m.
Elisa Badayos was the wife of former labor leader and desaparecidos Jimmy Badayos.
SPO2 Archer Birjes, investigator of the Bayawan City police station, said in a phone interview that the victims were on board a habal-habal (modified motorcycle) when they were fired upon by at least two men at Barangay Nangka around 3:40 p.m.
The three victims were brought to the Bayawan District Hospital where physicians pronounced Badayos and Moises dead on arrival. Matarlo was later brought to Dumaguete City, the provincial capital of Negros Oriental and about 106 kilometers from Bayawan City.
Badayos had a gunshot wound in the head while Moises was hit in the armpit.
Police recovered empty shells from a.45-caliber pistol at the site of the incident
Investigators were still determining the identities of the gunmen and the motive of the attack.
The victims dropped by the Bayawan police station before noon to coordinate with the police that they were going to Nangka to see the village chief, according to Birjes.
But in a statement, Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay said the victims went to the police station to report an earlier incident wherein armed men tried to stop them from entering Hacienda San Ramon in Nangka village where they would be conducting a fact-finding mission.
Patrick Torres, executive director of the Cebu-based Farmers Development Center and a member of the fact-finding mission, said they were on the last day of their four-day activity when the attack happened.
The three victims left the 30-person contingent to interview farmers in Nangka village who were reportedly harassed by security guards of a land claimant involved in a land dispute.
He said the attack has prompted concerns over the security and safety of the other participants who belong to human rights organizations and groups of women, workers and youth in Cebu and Negros Oriental.
The fact-finding mission was conducted to investigate reported cases of killings, harassment and other human rights violations in several towns in Negros Oriental.
Torres said nine members of farmers groups and militant organizations have been killed this year in Negros Oriental. These include eight in Guihulngan City alone.
The killings in Guihulngan happened after the July 21 ambush of New People’s Army rebels on the Guihulgan police force where in six policemen including the chief of police died and three others were wounded.
Karapatan condemned the attack.
“The attack on human rights defenders are becoming more rampant, more brutal, more fearless. The perpetrators know they will be dealt with impunity, as human rights have lost force and meaning especially under this regime. Fact-finding missions are a mechanism for human rights organizations to confirm reports of abuses, and this incident has only proven how fascism works to outrightly kill those who dare to question,” said Palabay said in the statement.