EU CONDEMNS RIGHTS LAWYER'S KILLING

THE EUROPEAN Union yesterday denounced the killing in Davao City of a
human rights worker who had mounted a campaign against vigilante
killings in the city.

"We are shocked by the cold-blooded murder" of Rashid Manahan,
executive director of the non-government advocacy group Community
Resource Development Center, the EU office said in Manila.

Police in Davao confirmed Manahan's killing, but gave no other
details.

Manahan was the Davao coordinator of "People Against the Death
Penalty," a campaign against capital punishment that is funded by a
300,000-euro grant, the European Union said.

Since January, President Macapagal-Arroyo has granted 90-day reprieves
to eight death row inmates set for judicial execution.

In December she had declared the end of a four-year moratorium on the
death penalty in order to curtail violence and crime.

Manahan, 26, of the Philippine Human Rights Information Center
(PhilRights), was waiting for Dr. Nymia Simbulan, PhilRights executive
director, and two other women companion, including a Spanish national,
outside an apartelle in J.P. Laurel Avenue here on Tuesday afternoon
when he was shot.

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has given the Davao City police seven days from
Wednesday to solve the killing of Manahan.

City police chief Supt. Conrado Laza vowed to submit a report on the
progress of investigation on the Manahan murder today.

Laza told a local daily that Manahan had received threats prior to his
death.

"We discovered a very revealing text message which can help us in the
investigation," he said without elaborating.

Simbulan and other witness said at least two suspects attacked
Manahan.

On the day he was killed, Manahan was hosting a forum on the series of
summary executions in the city.

He was supposed to drive Simbulan and the other speakers at the
University of the Philippines-Mindanao campus on Anda Street, where
the forum was being held.

Witnesses told police the two suspects had been waiting since
morning.

They said one of them even bought bottled water from a store near the
apartelle.

"It is very ironic that Manahan has become the victim when he was the
one who has initiated the forum to condemn these summary killings,"
Simbulan said.

Simbulan said Manahan's death could be politically motivated.

But Duterte urged the people not to jump to conclusions about the
motive of the killers even as suspicions are rife that Manahan's death
could be the work of the shadowy Davao Death Squad (DDS), a vigilante
group believed to have the support of Duterte.

The DDS has been targeting felons, mostly drug users and
pushers.

"I don't think he was killed because of drugs. Investigate and dig
deeper," Duterte said.

Duterte said authorities were trying to locate "a lady doctor to help
us out" but did not elaborate.

The Initiatives for International Dialogues, a human rights group
here, said even if the vigilantes were not involved in Manahan's
death, "the fact that they continue to enjoy impunity, has created the
very conditions for a possible spiral of fear, retribution, anarchy
and terror which the perpetrators and their handlers ironically avow
to eradicate with their summary executions."

"If the authorities cannot stop the vigilantes, what prevents other
criminal or even political elements from now snuffing out the lives of
any hapless victim.