Red-tagged doctor, husband slain in Negros. Inquirer Newsletter. December 17, 2020

No images? Click here   FAITH KEPT AGLOW   Catholics across the country attend the first day of  the “Misa de gallo” novena on Wednesday, with the Christmas tradition marked with unprecedented health and safety precautions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Churchgoers are required to wear masks and face shields and observe physical distancing, like this crowd outside Manila Cathedral. —RICHARD A. REYES     News Deal ends NLEx ‘toll holiday’ Valenzuela City lifted the suspension of the business permit of the tollway operator for North Luzon Expressway (NLEx) on Wednesday after the company agreed to raise the toll booth barriers from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. for faster flow of traffic. The city agreed to lowering the barriers from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. for security. The deal ended the “toll holiday” on the expressway. —STORY BY NIKKA G. VALENZUELA AND MARIEJO S. RAMOS Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Regions Cotabato City back to Bangsamoro Cotabato City is again part of Moro autonomy after 31 years. The national government on Tuesday turned over the city’s supervision to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, more than a year after the majority of its voters, through the plebiscite that ratified the Bangsamoro Organic Law, chose to join the new regional entity. The results of the plebiscite in the city are being contested in court. —STORY BY SHEILA DE LA CRUZ Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net/regions   Sports $228-M package keeps Giannis home Giannis Antetokounmpo will remain with the Milwaukee Bucks after agreeing to a new long-term deal on Tuesday, one reported to be the biggest in NBA history. The reigning NBA MVP agreed to a five-year deal with the Bucks worth $228 million. Antetokounmpo, who was born in Athens to Nigerian immigrants and once earned money hawking watches, bags and sunglasses as a street vendor, will earn an average $45.6 million a year. —STORY BY AFP Read more: sports.inquirer.net   Newsletter / Join us Has this been forwarded by a friend? Subscribe now to the Philippine Daily Inquirer Newsletter and get your latest news and important updates on COVID-19 and the enhanced community quarantine. Subscribe   Get here     Banner story Red-tagged doctor, husband slain in Negros By Raffy Cabristante and Carla Gomez DUMAGUETE CITY—Two gunmen killed the health officer of Guihulngan City in Negros Oriental province and front-liner in the city’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic  on Tuesday, a year after she was Red-tagged by a vigilante group. Dr. Mary Rose Sancelan, the head of the Guihulngan City Inter-Agency Task Force against Emerging Infectious Diseases (GCIATF-EID), was shot and killed along with her husband while they were going home to Carmeville Subdivision in the city’s Barangay Poblacion, police said. Progressive lawmakers in the House of Representatives, health groups and church leaders denounced the murder of Sancelan and her husband Edwin, saying it proved the “extreme danger” of being labeled as communists by state forces. The killings happened on the same day that the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Office of the Prosecutor said there was “reasonable basis” to believe that the Duterte administration committed crimes against humanity in its bloody war on illegal drugs. “It is as if the undemocratic and militarist forces in this country [are] daring the office to take action now, because these forces are protected and cannot be touched,” Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate said in a statement. No. 1 on vigilantes’ list Sancelan was on top of the list of Guihulngan residents whom the anticommunist vigilante group “Kagubak” accused of being supporters of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army. Kagubak stands for “Kawsa Guihulnganon Batok Komunista” (loosely translated as Concerned Guihulnganons against the Communists).” The list, which was released in 2018, identified Sancelan as “Ka JB Regalado,” who was then the spokesperson for the NPA’s Apolinario Gatmaitan Command. Two others on the list—lawyer Anthony Trinidad and Heidi Malalay Flores—had since been murdered, and their cases have remained unsolved. Trinidad was gunned down in broad daylight by motorcycle-riding men on July 23, 2019, while driving in the city, and his family has insisted that he had no links to communist rebels. Flores was killed in August 2018. Afternoon attack According to the provincial police, Sancelan and her husband Edwin, also an employee of the city government, were going home on board a motorcycle when one of two men on another motorcycle attacked them at 5:20 p.m. The couple, who suffered bullet wounds in their bodies, were brought by rescuers to Guihulngan Hospital but were pronounced dead on arrival by the attending physician, the police reported. “Investigators are on the ground looking for witnesses. As of now, there are no witnesses yet, but we’re looking if there is CCTV footage available from surrounding houses,” Police Col. Bryant Demot, provincial police director, told the Inquirer by phone. Demot said that while there was no established motive yet, investigators were “considering them all.” 2019 video statement Sancelan had expressed fears over her safety after she was Red-tagged in a video statement sent to a peace forum in Manila in September 2019. “I feel helpless and paranoid when I go out to work. Of course, I am afraid to die. I am no longer free to go to the countryside and perform basic services like school-based immunizations,” she said. Her workload, she said, was heavy as the lone physician in her office doing both consultations and administrative work. “Although she feared for her life, Dr. Sancelan chose to stay in her beloved hometown and continued to be involved in public service even after her work in the city health office,” the Council for Health Development (CHD) said in a statement. “We are enraged that such an act of impunity knows no bounds even at a time when the whole nation is gripped by the pandemic. Her killers deprived the people of Guihulngan much-needed health services, especially in this most difficult time,” it said. Guihulngan, 138 kilometers north of the provincial capital of Dumaguete City, has the most number of civilians killed on Negros Island since January 2017, based on records of human rights groups. 92 killed in Negros Clarizza Singson, secretary general of the human rights group Karapatan in Negros, said at least 92 human rights defenders, activists, lawyers, farmers, teachers and church workers had been killed since 2017. At least 88 others were detained after they were arrested allegedly on trumped-up charges, she added. San Carlos Bishop Gerardo Alminaza called on the people to pray so that the killings would end soon. “But join me, too, in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the senseless murder of helpless civilians and dedicated servants of government,” he said in a statement. “What is happening? Please enough of these killings! I ask our priests, religious and faithful to offer prayers for the victims and their families and for those responsible to be held accountable,” Alminaza said. The GCIATF-EID also mourned the death of Sancelan and her husband. “The task force reels from the loss of a courageous and dedicated front-liner who was instrumental in placing under control the ... spike of COVID-19 cases in the city last November,” it said in a statement. While it did not mention Sancelan in its statement, the Negros Oriental Medical Society said its members were “deeply saddened by the recent event in the province.” ‘Tragic example’ “This is a tragic example of the devaluation of the life of a doctor in public service. A senseless killing screams injustice and violence and goes against the very essence of a doctor—a life spent honoring life,” according to the statement issued by Dr. Joven Occeña, the group’s president. “This decade has seen a great loss in the number of doctors. We have never been more heartbroken and cut to the deep—we fight not just an unseen deadly virus, but a living, breathing, flesh and blood enemy,” he added. In January, the Senate committees on public order and dangerous drugs, and on justice and human rights recommended that Kagubak be investigated for the killings perpetuated by unidentified assailants. The committees, which jointly investigated the killings in Negros, also called for an internal investigation of policemen and military personnel who were involved in purported law enforcement operations resulting in the killing of civilians for possible human rights abuses and violations of the law. But their recommendations also included the deployment of more soldiers and policemen to Negros, which families and progressive organizations blamed for the spate of killings and human rights abuses. “The killing of Dr. Sancelan shows how this administration would rather prioritize Red-tagging, arrests and killing human rights defenders, journalists, doctors and critics of the antipeople policies of this administration than solve the still worsening health crisis in the country,” said ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro. Kabataan Rep. Sarah Elago said the murder of the Sancelan couple “is proof that Red-tagging poses a clear and present danger to the lives of those accused as affiliated with communist groups, and even of any Filipino as seemingly, the Duterte regime already spares no one.” —WITH REPORTS FROM JULIE M. AURELIO, PATRICIA DENISE M. CHIU AND JOVIC YEE   Read more: newsinfo.inquirer.net   Editorial Rhetoric and reality Dito Telecommunity Corp, formerly Mislatel, won the bidding to be the country's third telco in 2018. Among its commitments were to provide a minimum average broadband speed of 27 mbps on its first year, to be accelerated to 55 mbps by its fifth year, when it should have covered 84 percent of the population. Dito failed to fulfill its network rollout schedule, citing movement restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was then granted an extension to fulfill its first-year commitments from July this year to January next year. The delay in the physical rollout of telco infrastructure is one thing; of greater nagging concern among observers is the national security risk posed by Dito's corporate setup arising from the 40-percent stake in it by a state-run Chinese company. Under Chinese law, Chinese companies are required to report to the Beijing government any information it asks of them. Compounding such fears is the controversial agreement signed by Dito and the Department of National Defense that officially allows the telco partly owned by the Chinese government to set up installations inside military camps. The Duterte administration had brushed off objections to the deal, saying the military has enough safeguards against possible spying and infiltration that may be carried out through the China-backed towers and IT system to be installed inside the military camps. But National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. recently admitted to an alarming reality: The government does not have a robust "operations center to defend against cyberattacks on a national level." So "how can the government assure us they’ve given a fair assessment of the safety to our sovereignty if we don’t even have a cybersecurity group that does the assessment?" demanded Sen. Grace Poe. Read full story: opinion.inquirer.net     Copyright © 2020 PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER, All rights reserved. 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