2 activists gunned down in Abra, Ilocos Sur

BAGUIO CITY — Assassins’ bullets felled two activists in separate attacks in Ilocos Sur and Abra these past two days.

At about 10 p.m. last Monday, Jose Manegdeg III, 37, a worker of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines-Ilocos and Cordilleras, was gunned down in San Esteban, Ilocos Sur.

Several hours later, at about 9 a.m., Albert Terredaño, a human rights activist working with the Department of Agrarian Reform office in Bangued, Abra, was shot by a motorcycle-riding man. He died at 3:45 p.m. yesterday.

Reports said Manegdeg was also a local coordinator of the party-list group Bayan Muna, whose predecessor, Romeo Sanchez, was also killed last year.

According to the Baguio City-based Cordillera Human Rights Alliance, Manegdeg was attacked minutes after he had left a human rights training seminar, where he was a trainer-educator, at the Ursa Major Resort in Barangay Apatot, San Esteban town.

The seminar was sponsored by the Ilocos Human Rights Alliance (IHRA), a regional affiliate of the Alliance for the Advancement of Human Rights.

Manegdeg was a former coordinator of the Catholic Church-based Regional Ecumenical Council in the Cordillera Region and an editorial staffer of its publication, Writing on the Wall.

His colleagues said Manegdeg left the resort at about 10 p.m. and took a tricycle to the national highway where he was to take a bus to Manila.

He was reportedly slated to meet his wife, Florence, who would be arriving from Hong Kong yesterday afternoon, they said.

Manegdeg reportedly alighted at a waiting shed on the highway where a man aboard a van shot him.

Fearing for his life, the tricycle driver sped off, returned to the resort and informed Manegdeg’s companions about the incident.

Together with the police, they rushed to the scene and found his bag, cellular phone and other belongings missing.

Manegdeg’s body bore 22 gunshot wounds from a caliber .45 semi-automatic pistol.

Meanwhile, Terredaño, a human rights volunteer of the Cordillera Indigenous People’s Legal Center, was shot twice, with the bullets piercing his lungs. — With Cecille Suerte Felipe and AP