CPA-Kalinga Vice Chair Ambushed, wife killed in death-squad ambush

BAGUIO CITY, 31 July (NORDIS) ­ Dr. Constancio "Chandu" Claver, vice chairperson of the Kalinga chapter of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance was seriously wounded while his wife Alice Omengan Claver killed in an ambush by two gunmen at 6:45 am this morning (Monday July 31) in Bulanao, Tabuk, Kalinga.Dr. Claver is also the chairperson of Bayan Muna (People First) partylist-Kalinga chapter.

Mrs. Claver, 42, expired at around noontime, despite desperate efforts to save her life by attending physicians at the Kalinga Provincial Hospital, where the couple was rushed after the shooting. Dr. Claver
was declared out of danger earlier this morning.

The Clavers had just ferried their Grade 3 daughter to her class at St. Tonis College and were on the way out of the school grounds when the masked men, reportedly riding on a black van, fired on their car.

Janice Ewag, 23, a student bystander, was also hit by shrapnel from stray bullets. Local police said they recovered M16 rifle shells at the site.

Dr. Claver, a medical doctor who is more popularly known by his native Igorot name Chandu, is a scion of a prominent Cordillera clan that includes former Kalinga congressman William Claver and Bontoc mayor
Louis Claver.

The 49-year old Chandu has been long active in community-based health initiatives and indigenous peoples' concerns since the Marcos era.

In an interview by nationwide radio station dzRH, PNP Kalinga chief Pedro Ramos claimed that Claver was a member of the communist-led National Democratic Front (NDF).

Interviewed by phone, relatives and colleagues denied this police allegation as totally unfounded, although they alluded to earlier incidents where Chandu reportedly received veiled warnings from local authorities that "he would be next if he did not get out of Kalinga soon."

This, they presumed, was in reference to the earlier killing of Rafael Markus Bangit, another militant CPA leader and elder of the Kalinga Malbong tribe. Bangit was shot dead on June 8 at a bus stopover in Isabela, also by van-riding masked men, on his way from Kalinga to Baguio City.

Regional PNP authorities denied that there is a pattern of political killings in Kalinga, amidst widespread allegations by human rights groups that the province was turning into a "killing fields" and that
locally-based death squads were being coddled by certain military and police officials. #