6 August 2019
A journalist and human rights worker is seriously wounded after being shot by unidentified gunmen in front of his house in Lagawe, Ifugao at six o’clock tonight, Tuesday, August 6.
Brandon Lee, Ifugao correspondent of Baguio City-based media outfit Northern Dispatch and paralegal volunteer of both the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance (CHRA) and the Ifugao Peasant Movement (IPM), was immediately taken to a local hospital for treatment. No further detail of his condition is available.
In a statement, the CHRA said the 54th IBPA frequented Lee’s residence as well as the offices of both the IPM and the Justice and Peace Advocates of Ifugao, of which he is also a member, for weeks prior to tonight’s shooting. The soldiers gathered data by interrogating and intimidating the organizations’ members and staff, the CHRA reported. The Philippine Army team was headed by a certain 1Lt Karol Jay R. Mendoza while its CMO officer Narciso B. Nabulneg, Jr. reportedly invoked President Rodrigo Duterte’s E.O.70 in their interrogations, the group added.
In 2015, Lee was among the IPM members and staff accused of being New People’s Army members. Lee’s media outfit, Northern Dispatch, had also been a victim of red-tagging by the National Intelligence Coordinating.
Lee first became Northern Dispatch’s correspondent in 2010.
