QUEZON CITY (UCAN): Some 100 members of a Catholic pro-life group in the Philippines, Life and Hope, marched on the streets of Quezon City, Metro Manila, the Philippines, on March 6 to protest the killings of a provincial governor and five others on two days previous.
They gathered in front of the Commission on Human Rights in Quezon City and lit candles at St. Peter’s Church.
The governor of Negros Oriental province, Roel Degamo, and five others were killed only two days earlier when armed assailants entered Degamo’s house and gunned him and the others down before escaping, local media reported.
The victims were rushed to a hospital and pronounced dead on arrival, reports said.
“We do not come only as Catholics but as Filipino citizens who want peace and justice in our land. We have received reports that certain politicians still have goons for hire or private armies to annihilate their political enemies,” Life and Hope president, Javier Urbano, said. They urged the government to conduct a proper probe into the murders.
Urbano said that as long as political families pay money to private armed groups, the killings would never end in the country.
Those who killed Degamo “were guns for hire. Surely, there was someone, or perhaps a group, who wanted him dead… at the expense of innocent civilians,” Urbano added.
Bishop Julito Cortes of Dumaguete, which covers the province, called the killing as a “senseless act of murder.”
In a statement, the bishop asked, “How can we ever have lasting peace if we keep living in a culture of violence? When will this cycle of killings ever stop?”
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Degamo’s family members suspected political motives behind the killing as they have been receiving death threats for months.
How can we ever have lasting peace if we keep living in a culture of violence? When will this cycle of killings ever stop?
Bishop Cortes
“When he [Degamo] took his oath of office, several people already advised him to be careful… they even intercepted a van loaded with high-powered rifles that his assassins would purportedly use against him,” Degamo’s wife and Negros Oriental mayor, Janice Degamo, told reporters on March 5.
Degamo became the governor after the Supreme Court dismissed the previous governor and political rival, Pyrde Teves, following an election protest.
Teves was the governor of Negros Oriental from June to October 2022 when the Election Commission annulled his proclamation of victory after a recount of May 2022 election votes.
The pro-life group said whoever was behind the killing used the money to hire a private army, which is common in the Philippines.
“The financier of this group is wealthy… the guns that they used were all high-powered,” the group’s secretary, Leo Mendoza, asserted.
In 2010, then president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, established the Independent Commission Against Private Armies [ICAPA] to step up efforts to dismantle private armies in the Philippines.
A year before, the Swiss-funded Centre for Humanitarian Dialogues reported that 115 armed groups, linked to local politicians and political clans, existed across the country.
“The use of militia by clans, security agencies, and politicians pose numerous challenges for more accountable public security in the Philippines,” the report said.
Philippine police have arrested five suspects and another was killed in a shootout since security forces launched a manhunt over the killing.
Degamo was known as an ally of the president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and campaigned for him during the presidential election last year.
“My government will not rest until we have brought the perpetrators of this dastardly and heinous crime to justice,” Marcos said after the news of the murder broke.
