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Printed with permission from the authorILOILO CITY - Two days before Earth Day celebrations, which is today, a Harvard-educated lawyer, law professor and internationally-acclaimed environmentalist activist said that a bounty of P1 million has been offered for his assasination.
This threat to Antonio Oposa followed in the heels of the brutal killing of his friend and collegue Elpidio "Jojo" de la Victoria, director of the Cebu City Fisheries Commission on the Visayan Sea who was shot on April 12, 2006 and died the next day. Oposa, who works with de la Victoria in the Visayan Sea Squadron, said they have been both receiving death threats after working to exclude commercial fishing operators from the Visayan seas.
De la Victoria, director of the Cebu City Bantay Dagat Commission and concurrent market administrator, was shot three times on April 12 at 3:30 pm while he was about to enter the gate of his house at Ramona Village, Sitio Dawis, Barangay San Roque, Talisay City.
Reports from Cebu said bullets hit De la Victoria in the arm, thigh and back with one bullet tearing through his abdomen.
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña offered a reward of P200,000 for information leading to the arrest of de la Victoria´s gunman.
Reports from Cebu said bullets hit De la Victoria in the arm, thigh and back with one bullet tearing through his abdomen.
Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña offered a reward of P200,000 for information leading to the arrest of de la Victoria´s gunman.
An off-duty policeman was suspected to be de la Victoria´s killer.
Aside from his posts as a market administrator and Bantay Dagat director, de la Victoria is also president of the Philippine National Association of Fish Wardens and director of Cebu City coastal management board.
Oposa and de la Victoria have been working to halt destructive fishing practices in the Visayan sea, including illegal commercial fishing encroachments into municipal waters.
The Visayan sea is considered to be the most biologically diverse marine area in the world.
The news of the assasination and the continued threats to Oposa, a globally acclaimed conservationist, has triggered an outpour of dismay and concern from law professors and conservationists around the world who are demanind that the Philippine government ensure Oposa´s safety.
Oposa is an internationally-known environmental attorney, educated in Manila and Harvard, a law teacher in a number of schools in the Philippines and abroad, a director of the Council on International Environmental Law, a consultant to the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, the United Nations, the US Agency for International Development and the European Union.
He has won a series of significant environmental protection cases, most recently dealing with protection of the resources of the Visayan sea, for which he organized the Visayan Sea Squadron.
The public funeral for de la Victoria will be held in Cebu City this coming Sunday afternoon, a day after Earth Day celebrations worldwide.
Since April 17, 2006, more than 125 law professors and deans from more than dozen countries have signed a letter of concern to be sent to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo expressing their horrified "dismay" at the violence.
"It would be," the petition declares, "a terrible mark upon the international reputation of the rule of law in the Philippines, and a devastating loss for the international legal and environmental communities, if further harm came to the citizen conservationists."
Hazel P. Villa is an Inquirer Correspondent for the Visayas.