A deadly land for rights activists

For the past three years, Zara Alvarez had been monitoring and documenting the killings and arrest of farmers, lawyers and activists on Negros Island. She organized missions to look into cases of suspected human rights violations, coordinated with lawyers and helped families of the victims.

Around 7:00pm on Monday, Alvarez became a victim herself.

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A man wearing a face mask and a cap shot her repeatedly as she was walking with two others to her boarding house at Eroreco Subdivision in Barangay Mandalagan here.

Alvarez, 39, a single mother to an 11-year-old girl, died on the spot.

Alvarez, a former political detainee, served as a paralegal for the human rights group Karapatan and as research and advocacy officer of the nongovernmental organization Negros Island Health Integrated Program.

Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos, Negros Occidental, was grief-stricken.

"I just cannot believe this continuing madness of senseless killings. These systemic killings of human rights defenders and activists must be condemned and must stop," Alminaza said in a statement on Tuesday.

Alvarez was the 89th victim of killings of human rights defenders, lawyers and other activists since January 2017 on Negros Island based on a list she had helped compile and update.

Karapatan said she was the 13th human rights worker of the group killed since President Duterte took office in 2016.

Alvarez was attacked just hours after slain Anakpawis chair and peace talks consultant Randall Echanis was buried in Marikina City. Echanis was stabbed and shot by unidentified assailants in Quezon City a week earlier.

Activist groups suspect that state agents were responsible for both killings.

Echanis and Alvarez were among 600 people listed as terrorists by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2018 in a proscription petition in the regional trial court of Manila. They were removed from the list after the petition was amended last year.

Alvarez, however, continued to receive "relentless threats, vilification and harassment from the military," Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said.

In Manila, Bayan Muna (A leftist political party) Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate said the "attacks against the political opposition and critics of the administration is really getting more intense."

 "It seems that the said (DOJ "terrorist") list has become a hit list of sorts as many of those named are now either arrested on trumped-up charges or worse, ended up being assassinated," he said.