DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 02 Mar) – Unidentified gunmen shot dead a leader of a militant group in a daring broad daylight attack Friday in the southern Philippine city of Digos, police said.
Police said Renato Pacaide was walking with his daughter when motorcycle-gunmen shot him in the head. His daughter was unharmed.
The 53-year old Pacaide was the secretary general of Nagkahiusang Mag-uuma sa Davao del Sur (NAMADS) and coordinator of the party list group, Anakpawis, in the province.
His group condemned the killing and blamed the government and the military for the attack.
“We hold the Arroyo government and the Armed Forces of the Philippines responsible for the killing of Pacaide," Editha Duterte, spokesperson for the Anakpawis in Southern Mindanao, said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
She said Pacaide was assassinated by two armed motorcycle-riding men at around 10:45 a.m. along Rizal Avenue corner Lim Street.
"In the midst of national and international condemnation against political killings, the senseless and brutal killings against members and leaders of progressive party-lists and organizations continue without compunction,” Duterte said.
Duterte accused the military of political partisan. She said soldiers, from the Army’s 39th Infantry Battalion, have been campaigning against Anakpawis and its allied party-lists in Davao del Sur.
The military linked the party list group to the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels. The NPA is the armed wing of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) which is fighting the past three decades for a separate Marxist state in the country.
"Such maneuvers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines had put our lives in peril. By relentlessly linking us with the CPP-NPA, the AFP under the aegis of the Arroyo government is giving outright license to kill our members and leaders," Duterte said.
More than 800 mostly political activists and members of militant groups have been killed since President Arroyo assumed the presidency in 2001. An independent commission linked soldiers to most of the killings, but the military denied the accusations.
Philip Alston, United Nations Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur, who was in the Philippines this month to investigate the spate of killings, said the military is in state of total denial about the involvement of soldiers in the attacks.
"We demand justice for Pacaide! We dare the AFP and the Arroyo government to face their responsibility with the political killings," Duterte said. (Mindanao Examiner)
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