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Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Editorials: Culture of death
While the investigation on the killing of businessman Wilson Yu remains unsolved and less than a month after labor leader Antonio Cuizon survived a slay try, unidentified armed men struck anew, killing a couple and a driver in downtown Cebu City.
While the record of Zacarias and Esterlita Flores, who were shot with their driver, Giovanni Renquenzo, was not spotless in the eyes of the police, they shared with Yu the brutal manner with which they met their death.
And while the Flores couple and Renquenzo were not robbery suspects like most of those killed by suspected vigilantes in Cebu City, they also died at the hands of motorcycle-riding gunmen whose faces were covered by helmets and cloth.
Police say the Floreses were in and out of jail for alleged links to the illegal drug trade, which made them a candidate for the growing list of people felled by suspected vigilantes (meaning, the list may breach the century mark at 101 deaths).
The couple’s relatives are discounting for now the vigilante angle, believing instead that a previous personal conflict may have done the Floreses in.
But a vigilante hit or not, there is still the disturbing reality of the rising number of attacks by armed men on defenseless people, with the police helpless in preventing or even identifying and arresting the suspects.
A few weeks ago, the police and other public officials crowed about the supposed lowering of the number of petty crimes committed in Metro Cebu but were silent about the rise in the number of unsolved murders.
Indeed, there is nothing to boast about the culture of death that seems to have enveloped us already.
Parading new ‘demons’
Months before, it was Rey Torres, Danilo Limotan and Joel “Tongol” Nodalo who were blamed by the police for the robbery hits that bedeviled Metro Cebu.
Torres and Limotan are in jail, with the former losing one of his legs during his arrest. Unidentified armed men killed Nodalo in Bohol.
But with robbery incidents continuing, the latest being the one that victimized an agent of Western Union Money Transfer, the police are parading new people to blame, like Jimuel Cardoza, Nardo Abapo and Renato Hermosila.
There is nothing wrong with presenting suspects ever so often, the problem is when they are used merely as scapegoats for the police’s failure to nail the real culprits.
In this instance, the string of robbery incidents can never be fully solved.
(November 8, 2005 issue)
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