EDITORIAL - Another activist killed

Barely a week after the killing of Anakpawis partylist chairman and National Democratic Front peace consultant Randall “Randy” Echanis, another activist has been murdered.

This time it was Zara Alvarez, an advocacy officer of a community health program and paralegal of the human rights group Karapatan. According to reports, Alvarez was killed after being shot six times by unidentified assailants as she was heading home after buying food in Bacolod City.

Alvarez was known to have been vocal against abuses against farmers and was reportedly listed as a terrorist by the Department of Justice in 2016. While she was eventually removed from that list, we all know that the stigma of red tagging never really disappears from the minds of those who were tagged, those who did the tagging, and those who know about it.

"The killing of Zara Alvarez is another addition to the alarming string of attacks against human rights workers and advocates in the country. The Commission on Human Rights sees this as a cause for concern, especially that the number of cases is still growing and justice is nowhere in sight," Jacqueline de Guia, spokeswoman for the Commission on Human Rights, said in a statement last Thursday.

Again, as we said earlier in the case of Echanis, we should not immediately point to state forces as being behind this latest incident. We always have to assume everyone is presumed innocent before being proven guilty.

But again we must point out, as we also said earlier in the case of Echanis, that this latest incident will reinforce the belief, as well as the greatest fears of some sectors and individuals, that the state is again mobilizing its forces to silence its critics.

When we say “again” we mean it has been done before, in the dark days of martial law.

While we are not under martial law today, those greatest fears of government critics are not exactly unfounded after the passing of the anti-terror bill that, while noble in its intentions, has too many broad and sweeping definitions of who can be considered a terrorist and what can be considered terroristic activities.

At least in this latest case, nothing else can lay such an issue to rest but the total and complete solution of this murder. Let’s just hope that the investigation doesn’t reveal that some greatest fears have come true.