Gunmen killed a leader of a large farmers’ group pushing for agrarian reform on a southern island in the Philippines, local police said yesterday.
Rene Penas and two companions were on their way to a farm in Bukidnon Province on Mindanao island when two men blocked their motorcycle and opened fire on them with shotguns late on Friday, Rey Vasquez, police chief in Sumilao town, told reporters.
“Penas did not make it to the hospital,” Vasquez said, adding that his two companions were wounded in the attack. “Penas even tried to crawl but was shot again by the two men who fled on foot in a dark stretch of the highway.”
Vasquez said they were interviewing the farmer’s family and friends to establish the motive for the attack, two days after the lower house of Congress approved a law extending for five years funding for the state’s agricultural reform program.
Balaod Mindanaw, a local non-governmental organization helping farmers with land-related legal problems, was sending a team of lawyers to make parallel investigation.
“We condemn the death of Rene,” Normi Batula, Balaod Mindanaw managing director, said in a statement. “It is so painful to lose a great farmer leader who aggressively pushed forward land issues. We demand justice for his death.”
Penas, 51, vice president of a large farmers group, had organized and led weeks of street protests that forced lawmakers to approve new legislation on agricultural reform, appropriating 100 billion pesos (US$2.1 billion) late on Wednesday.
Penas’s murder came less than a week after a UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings criticized the Philippines for its failure to put in place measures to stop the attacks on left-wing farmers, labor organizers, activists and journalists.
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