ZAMBOANGA CITY, 23 March 2008 — A gay man was shot dead in the southern island Jolo on Friday, exactly a week after the murder of another homosexual in the same place, police said yesterday.
Romeo Lim, 25, the son of an army soldier, was having dinner at a friend’s house in the village of Asturias in Jolo town when a gunman appeared from nowhere and shot him several times, said Inspector Usman Pingay, the town’s chief of police. The victim died instantly.
“We still do not know the motive or who were behind the murder. We are still investigating,” Pingay said. “We have invited his three friends who witnessed the killing for questioning.”
Lim, popularly known by his alias “Aya Medel,” the name of a movie starlet, owns the Splash Beauty Salon in downtown Jolo.
On March 16, Jai Jillang, said to be a gay, was reported stabbed and clubbed to death inside the police provincial headquarters in Jolo.
It was unknown whether the killings were connected, but homosexuality is strictly forbidden in Sulu and other provinces that make up the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. Jolo is the capital of Sulu, about 950 km south of Manila.
