MANILA, Philippines — An organizer of the activist party-list Bayan Muna in Guihulngan City, Negros Oriental was gunned down Wednesday as he left the Department of Education office where he worked.
The Negros chapter of the human rights group Karapatan linked the killing of Oscar Solania Asildo Jr. to the government’s counterinsurgency campaign, nothing that he had been openly accused of being a supporter of the New People’s Army, which is active in the hinterlands of the city.
On July 21, Guihulngan chief of police Superintendent Arnel Arpon and five of his men died and three other policemen were wounded when they were ambushed by NPA guerrillas as they responded to an earlier attack in which Councilor Edison dela Rita had been wounded and his aide killed.
Negros cop chief, 5 men responding to attack on councilor slain in NPA ambush
Karapatan said Asildo, 46, who worked as a bookkeeper at the DepEd division office in front of the South Central School on Paterno Street, Barangay Poblacion, was about to get into his car past 11 a.m. when a gunman wearing a cap shot him several times as accomplices on a motorcycle and in a white care without license plates acted as lookouts.
The gunman boarded the motorcycle to escape.
The human rights group said Asildo died of multiple gunshots, including one in the mouth, the bullet exiting through his nape.
