Saying that the killings of two activists within a span of one week in one city is “alarming,” a top official of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is going to Tacloban City in Leyte to personally look into the incidents there.
Reynaldo Esmeralda, NBI deputy director for regional operation services, said he is planning to go to Tacloban City on Tuesday, a day after President Arroyo delivers her State of the Nation Address (SONA).
“I will be going (there) to supervise the investigation into these sensational cases. We will be prioritizing (these unexplained) killings. This would show that we are serious,” he said.
He said the incidents have become a cause of alarm in Eastern Visayas, as they happened in the same week when the Supreme Court sponsored the two-day National Consultative Summit on Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances.
In the first incident, Charlie Solayao, vice president of the fish vendors’ group Katipunan ng mga Gudti ng Magtirinda (Kaguma), an affiliate of the militant party-list group Anakpawis, was gunned down on July 17, the second day of the summit.
Solayao was waiting for a ride in front of the parking lot of a bus company in Barangay 71 Naga-Naga, Tacloban City when two motorcycle-riding men fired at him.
In a report, NBI-Eastern Visayas regional director Antonio Pagatpat quoted Solayao’s wife Marina as believing that the killing had something to do with her husband’s affiliation with progressive groups such as Kaguma.
Three days later, Rogelio Picoy, a former Anakpawis member who later joined the Philippine Guardian Brotherhood Inc., was gunned down in the Tacloban City public market. He reportedly worked as a police asset.
A 70-year-old vendor, Teresita Tadifa, was also killed in the attack as the bullet that hit Picoy’s right eye also hit her in the abdomen.