ILOILO City – Progressive groups picketed outside the Police Regional Office 6 in Camp Delgado here yesterday morning to protest what they claimed were the harassment, intimidation and attempted abduction of urban poor leader Wilfredo “Tay Pido” Panuela in Barangay Bitoon, Jaro district.
They tagged the Philippine National Police, Philippine Army and National Bureau of Investigation as behind the alleged acts.
Panuela, 65, was a leader of urban poor organization Kaisog. According to Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan-Panay), he was preparing lunch on Sunday, July 7, when two men on motorbikes stopped in front of his house and asked him to go with them.
The men did not say why they needed Panuela and also refused to identify themselves, according to Bayan-Panay.
Alarmed, Panuela’s voice grew louder and this alarmed family members and neighbors who came out and encircle the men.
Two village officials were present that time and, together with Panuela’s family members and neighbors, brought the two men to the barangay hall.
The two men identified themselves as members of the National Bureau of Investigation and Philippine Army but declined to disclose their intention on Panuela, according to Bayan-Panay.
Panuela himself disclosed that a week ago, also on a Sunday (June 30), two men he suspected were members of state forces harassed him and wife Josephine near Inayan Beach Resort along the coastal road in Leganes, Iloilo.
He said the men told him that they knew his family, they knew the places he frequently visited and they knew that he was a leader of the urban poor.
Panuela said the men further told him his name and that of his wife were already passed to the higher-ups (“sa babaw”) then they tried to give him P500.
Panuela said he declined the money.
The men ordered him to stop engaging with the local urban poor group Kaisog with whom he had been involved for almost three decades now, according to Panuela, a street hawker.
Kaisog led an anti-demolition campaign against the urban poor in barangays Balabago and Bitoon in Jaro 2016.
Recently, they had a city-wide synchronized cleanup drive against dengue and called on the government to provide more aid to patients./PN
