Baguio newspaper correspondent survives gun attack

BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philipines —The president of a local media organization survived a gun attack on his way home Tuesday night, police said.

Aldwin Quitasol, a Baguio correspondent for the Daily Tribune, was walking along a dimly lit portion of Barangay Quezon Hill at 9:30 p.m. when a shot rang out.

Police said Quitasol, president of Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC), managed to drop flat on the ground to avoid getting hit.

Quitasol saw two men speed off on a motorcycle, said his wife, Kimberlie, an Inquirer correspondent.

Mayor Benjamin Magalong has ordered the Baguio police to investigate the incident.

A police team searched the area where Quitasol saw something strike a metal fence, but investigators could not find a bullet casing or fragment as of Wednesday morning.

Quitasol told the Inquirer that he had not received threats prior to the attack.

But in January, Quitasol received an invitation from the police to join a dialogue in relation to the anti-insurgency campaign “dumanun makitungtong” (Ilocano for visit and discuss), according to his wife.

This was an offshoot of a controversial plan by law enforcement agencies to employ the government’s anti-drug tactic “tokhang” (a contraction of the Visayan terms for “knock and plead”) on Cordillera activists, journalists, and government employees with suspected sympathies or ties to communist rebels.

Before his association with the Daily Tribune, Quitasol worked for the Cordillera Labor Center, which championed wage hikes and labor rights in the region.

—VINCENT CABREZA

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