Trade union leader shot dead in Cavite

SAN PEDRO CITY–A member of the labor alliance Partido Mangggagawa (PM) was shot and killed in Tanza town in Cavite province on Sunday, in an attack which the group said targeted union activists.

Dennis Sequena, who was also PM’s fourth partylist nominee in the May elections, had just wrapped up his lecture on trade unionism when he was gunned down by motorcycle-riding gunmen between 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. in Barangay (village) Bunga.

Sequena was taken to the General Trias Maternity and Pediatric Hospital in Cavite but died while undergoing treatment.

PM chairperson Rene Magtubo, in a phone interview, said the gunmen had even asked one of the workers attending the lecture if he happened to be “Dennis.”

The worker said he was not and told them the person they were looking for was still speaking inside the daycare center at PM’s “workers’ ville” facility.

Magtubo said the men waited for Sequena to finish his talk and step out when they shot him.

“It was an extra judicial killing. It was premeditated,” Magtubo said.

Sequena, who was a resident of Tanza, was actively handling at least three labor disputes inside the economic zones in Cavite at the time of his death.

Magtubo said Sequena had not reported to them any security threat and had no personal enemy as he was a known community organizer in Cavite. (Editor: Jonathan P. Vicente)