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OFFICE MEMORIAL Colleagues of Guihulngan City Health Officer Dr. Mary Rose Sancelan, who was shot to death by unknown killers along with her husband on their way home Tuesday, erected their own memorial outside her office . Sancelan had previously expressed fears for her life after she and other city residents were labeled red by a group of vigilantes in Negros. —PHOTO COURTESY OF ELESEO VILLAGRACIA III / GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF GUIHULNGAN
DUMAGUETE CITY – Two gunmen killed a health officer for the city of Guihulngan in Negros Oriental province and a leader in the city’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic on Tuesday, a year after a group of vigilantes labeled it red.
Dr. Mary Rose Sancelan, head of the Guihulngan City Interagency Task Force Against Emerging Infectious Diseases (GCIATF-EID), was shot and killed along with her husband while on their way to their home in the Carmeville subdivision in the Barangay City Poblacion, police. said.
Progressive House lawmakers, health groups and church leaders denounced the murder of Sancelan and her husband Edwin, saying it demonstrated the “extreme danger” of being labeled communists by state forces.
The killings occurred on the same day that the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor’s Office said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that the Duterte government committed crimes against humanity in its bloody war against illegal drugs. (See related story on page A1).
“It is as if the antidemocratic and militaristic forces of this country [are] to challenge the office to act now, because these forces are protected and cannot be touched, ”said Bayan Muna’s representative, Carlos Zárate, in a statement.
No. 1 on the watch list
Sancelan topped the list of Guihulngan residents whom the anti-communist self-defense group “Kagubak” accused of being supporters of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army.
Kagubak means “Kawsa Guihulnganon Batok Communist” (loosely translated as Guihulnganons concerned against communists) “.
The list, which was published in 2018, identified Sancelan as “Ka JB Regalado,” who was then the spokesman for the NPA’s Apolinario Gatmaitan Command.
Two others on the list, attorney Anthony Trinidad and Heidi Malalay Flores, had since been murdered and their cases remain unsolved.
Trinidad was shot and killed in broad daylight by men on motorcycles on July 23, 2019 while driving in the city, and his family has insisted he had no ties to the Communist rebels. Flores was assassinated in August 2018.
Afternoon attack
According to provincial police, Sancelan and her husband Edwin, also a city government employee, were driving home on a motorcycle when one of two men on another motorcycle attacked them at 5:20 pm.
The couple, who suffered gunshot wounds to the body, were taken by rescuers to Guihulngan hospital, but the responsible doctor pronounced them dead upon arrival, police said.
“Investigators are on the ground looking for witnesses. As of now, there are no witnesses yet, but we are looking for available CCTV footage of the surrounding houses, ”Police Colonel 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 for her safety after she was tagged red 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 of dying. I no longer have the freedom to go to the fields and perform basic services such as school vaccinations, ”he said.
His workload, he said, was heavy as the only doctor in his office doing consultation and administrative work.
“Although she feared for her life, Dr. Sancelan decided to stay in her beloved hometown and continued to participate in public service even after her job at the city’s health bureau,” said the Council for Health Development ( CHD) in a statement.
“We are infuriated that such an act of impunity knows no bounds, even at a time when the entire nation is affected by the pandemic. His killers deprived the people of Guihulngan of much-needed health services, especially at this very difficult time, ”he said.
Guihulngan, 138 kilometers north of the provincial capital of Dumaguete city, has the highest number of civilians killed on Negros Island since January 2017, according to records from human rights groups.
92 dead in Negros
Clarizza Singson, general secretary of the human rights group Karapatan in Negros, said that at least 92 human rights defenders, activists, lawyers, farmers, teachers and church workers had been killed since 2017.
At least 88 other people were detained after allegedly being arrested on trumped-up charges, it added.
The Bishop of San Carlos, Gerardo Alminaza, called people to pray that the killings would end soon. “But join me as well in condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the senseless killing of defenseless civilians and dedicated government servants,” he said in a statement.
“What is happening? Please stop these murders! I ask our priests, religious and faithful to offer prayers for the victims and their families and to hold those responsible to account,” said Alminaza.
The GCIATF-EID also mourned the death of Sancelan and her husband.
“The task force is reeling from the loss of a courageous and dedicated leader who was instrumental in bringing the … surge in COVID-19 cases in the city last November under control,” 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 murder screams injustice and violence and goes against the very essence of a doctor, a life dedicated to honoring life “, according to the statement issued by Dr. Joven Occeña, president of the group.
“This decade has seen a great loss in the number of doctors. We have never been more heartbroken and cut to the depths; We fight not only against an invisible deadly virus, but against a living, breathing enemy of flesh and blood ”, 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 by unidentified assailants.
The committees, which jointly investigated the killings in Negros, also called for an internal investigation of the police and military personnel who participated in alleged police operations that resulted in the murder of civilians for possible human rights abuses and violations of the law.
But his recommendations also included the deployment of more soldiers and police to Negros, whom families and progressive organizations blamed for the series of killings and human rights abuses.
“The assassination of Dr. Sancelan shows how this administration prefers to prioritize the red labeling, arrests and murders of human rights defenders, journalists, doctors and critics of the anti-popular policies of this administration than solving the health crisis that is still worsening in the country, ”he said. ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro.
Kabataan representative Sarah Elago said that the murder of the Sancelan couple “is proof that the red labeling represents a clear and present danger to the lives of the accused as affiliated with communist groups, and even of any Filipino. as apparently the Duterte regime no longer None. ” —WITH REPORTS FROM JULIE M. AURELIO, PATRICIA DENISE M. CHIU, AND JOVIC YEE
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