Shooting erupts in Boracay over land row

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

ILOILO CITY—Violence has erupted anew on Boracay Island over a property dispute between two private owners in the world-famous destination.

Police on Monday detained five security guards of a property owner who allegedly opened fire on another group of security guards.

No one was hurt in the shooting that lasted for around 10 minutes in Sitio Balinghai in Barangay Yapac, one of three villages on the island, said Chief Insp. Joeffer Cabural, chief of the Boracay Tourist Assistance Center, the island’s police office.

Cabural said five security guard employed by the AFFA security agency were detained at the BTAC station and would face charges of illegal discharge of firearms.

Eight other security guards under the Golden Eye security agency were also subjected to paraffin tests but were released because there was no evidence they fired their weapons.

Cabural said the shooting erupted around noon on Monday after the AFFA guards, who were assigned to the property of the Aguirre family, had erected a fence that blocked the property of Elena Brugger.

When the security guards at Brugger’s property tried to remove the fence, the AFFA guards fired at them with shotguns.

The shooting occurred 10 days after the killing of Dexter Condez, the spokesperson of the Ati tribe in Boracay. Tribe members and their supporters believe the killing is related to disputes over a 2.1-hectare property that was last year awarded to the tribe by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples through a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title.

The conflicts involving ownership claims over prized lots have heightened and erupted into violence in recent years as investors, residents and long-time claimants fight over property rights.

Only about a third of the 1,032-hectare Boracay Island has titles while the rest are being occupied through tax declarations.

The boom in the island’s P22-billion tourism industry has attracted property claimants and investors. This has increased the number of lots from 270 in the 1970s to more than 6,000 at present.

The price of land on the island has also risen significantly ranging from P15,000 to P50,000 per square meter for properties near the  beach and from P5,000 to P15,000 per sq m for inland lots.

Tourist arrivals in Boracay reached 1,206,252 in 2012 while tourist earnings soared to P22.175 billion from P16.708 billion in 2011, according to data from the Department of Tourism.