ZAMBOANGA CITY, 15 April 2005 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday ordered a crackdown on hired killers and loose firearms amid an upsurge in high-profile attacks against journalists and politicians.

“The police are instructed to come up with a special order of battle for guns for hire and to check the proliferation of loose firearms that allow these heinous killings to be planned and executed,” she said.

Arroyo issued the directive a day after former congressman Henry Lanot was shot by a gunman while eating lunch with a friend in a posh restaurant in Manila’s suburban city Pasig.

“I condemn this murder in the strongest terms and I want the authorities to leave no stone unturned in bringing the perpetrators, including the mastermind to justice,” she said.

Arroyo had also ordered police to look into the continued killing of journalists, which has earned the Philippines the dubious distinction as the second most dangerous country for journalists, after war-town Iraq.

“Criminal justice and not violence is the only way to obtain retribution in a democratic society and we shall strike hard against those who take the law into their own hands,” Arroyo added.

Lanot, a former congressman of Pasig, succumbed to a lone gunshot wound in the head while being treated in a nearby hospital. Police have not yet established the identity of the killer and the motive behind the attack.

On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes sacked the entire 529-strong police force in the northern province of Abra due to their alleged failure to curb the proliferation of private armies in the area.

A four-man fact-finding team dispatched by Reyes said the police force in Abra failed to dismantle private armies by political clans, including some local officials.

The province’s governor was under investigation for allegedly plotting to kill one of the town mayors who was with the opposition party.

Sources in the interior department said most of the police officers in Abra offered their services as bodyguards to politicians for a fee.

Culture of Violence

Arroyo’s government had earlier been criticized for failing to curb the killing of journalists, presumably to silence them for reporting on the wrongdoings.

Despite the high-profile arrest of four suspects in the murder of columnist Arlene Esperat in Sultan Kudarat province last month, the violence against media continued in the southern island of Mindanao.

Esperat, a hard-hitting columnist for the tabloid called The Midland Review, was shot in the head by a gunman in front of her horrified children at home in the town of Tacurong.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) on Tuesday announced the capture of four people linked to the Esperat murder and the suspects pointed to a disgraced government official as behind the slaying.

Gunmen also killed in February Arnulfo Villanueva, a columnist for the Asian Star Express newspaper in Naic town in Cavite City, south of Manila.

Last Sunday, gunmen shot a radio broadcaster in Kabacan town of North Cotabato province as he was going home after work.

Alberto Martinez survived the attack and he was able to name his attackers, who are now the subject of a manhunt by police.

Unknown gunmen also opened fire yesterday on a radio station in Butuan City in northeastern Mindanao, reports said.

Two gunmen onboard a motorcycle fired shots before dawn on Bombo Radyo and then sped away. No one was hurt or killed in the attack, but it sent a chilling reminder that journalists are not safe in the Philippines, as the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had said.

Bomb Attacks

Meanwhile, security forces recovered a pair of hand grenades near a Catholic church in Mindanao, police said.

Police said the explosives, rigged to batteries and a timer, were discovered by civilians around 3 p.m. near the Holy Trinity Church in downtown Cotabato City in Maguindanao province, about 880 km south of Manila. Policemen and soldiers, who rushed to the scene, defused the M26 and MK2 grenades.

“The grenades were immediately detonated,” a police investigator Jun Feliciano told Arab News by phone from Cotabato City.

Grenades and other explosives are readily available from illegal gun dealers and previously used rebels to bomb civilians and military targets in the southern region.

Earlier this year, a powerful mortar bomb wired to an electronic timer, was also found inside the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Cotabato City, but it failed to detonate because of faulty wiring connection.

But in October 2003, a homemade bomb, packed with nails, exploded in front of the church, wounding five people. The Abu Sayyaf group tied to Al-Qaeda network has previously owned up to the bombings of many Catholic churches in the strife-torn region.