Another rights activist murdered in Mindoro

Human rights advocates have expressed alarm over what they claimed were the increasing attacks on militant party-list groups identified with the mainstream Left.

This, as one of their local coordinators was found dead in Mindoro Occidental last Wednesday with multiple stab and bullet wounds.

Karapatan, a human rights group, identified the victim as Andrian Algeria, 21, of Barangay Lumangbayan in Sta. Cruz, Mindoro Occidental.

Algeria was an organizer and coordinator of the party-list group Anakpawis, chaired by militant labor leader Crispin Beltran.

Algeria’s body was found under a bridge in Barangay Amnay in Sablayan, Mindoro Occidental.

According to Karapatan, he had two gunshot wounds in the chest and another in the nape, and seven stab wounds in different parts of the body.

Algeria’s wrists and lower arms also had rope burns, apparently from being tied too tightly, the group said.

Karapatan quoted witnesses as saying that seven armed men seized Algeria at dawn last Wednesday.

Karapatan suspects that Algeria’s abductors were members of the so-called Integrated Mindoro People’s Alliance Against Crime and Communist Terrorists.

"This is the work of monsters," Beltran said in a statement. "The most vicious monsters are in the Armed Forces."

Last Feb. 13, Vice Mayor Juvy Magsino of Naujan, Mindoro Oriental, and human rights activist Leima Fortu, both local leaders of militant party-list group Bayan Muna, were killed in an ambush, which left-wing organizations have blamed on the Army’s 204th Infantry Brigade based in Mindoro.