Philippines: Assassination of peasant leader in Panabo City, Davao del Norte, Mindanao

On April 24 at 6 PM, the prominent peasant leader Enrico Cabanit was brutally murdered by two masked men in an open market of Panabo City. He was shot four times in the head and died on spot. His daughter, Daffodil, was wounded in her chest and is in a critical situation. Enrico Cabanit was actively campaigning for land redistribution to landless peasants within the framework of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Among others, he was fighting against influencial land owners such as the Floirendos in Mindanao. Cabanit is the fourth peasant leader slain recently – apparently due to their involvement in agrarian reform advocacy that has earned the ire of the large landowners in their respective places: Two of them were killed in Negros Occidental, namely Rico Adeva (April 15, 2006) and Porfirio Maglasang (April 22, 2006) and one in Negros Oriental, Vicente Denila (March 27, 2006).

An international action is urgently needed to stop the series of murders of agrarian reform proponents. Please write a polite letter to the President of the Philippines, requesting her to immediately conduct an investigation to identify and punish the killers and their mandators.