US Journalist Brandon Lee Shot In Philippines Still Critical

Brandon Lee, a Chinese American journalist who was raised in the USA but has spent the last several years in the Philippines working as a journalist, paralegal, and a human rights activist. On Aug. 6, he was shot multiple times in his back and face and remains in critical condition in the Philippines with his wife and a young daughter.

According to some sources he is another victim of what has been called Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s policy of “build, build, build and kill, kill, kill” when it comes to detractors of developments such as a mini-hydro electric power plant project in the Ifugao province located in the center of Luzon where Lee was shot.

An update on Lee’s condition has been given by Democracy Now! which produces a global independent news hour show hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. During their Wednesday’s show, they did a segment on Lee and interviewed his mother Louise, San Francisco Supervisor Matt Haney and a friend and Filipina fellow activist of Lee, Raquel Redondieza.

Here are some highlights of that Democracy Now! segment:

• Louise Lee, who is Brandon’s mother expressed her concern for her son’s health especially his series of eight cardiac arrests that he reportedly has had since being shot. She says she is happy because he is still alive and thanked Baguio General Hospital for the care he is getting there. She worries that the assailant may come back to complete the job and hopes that the U.S. Embassy or other U.S. authorities will help get Brandon back to the U.S.
• Matt Haney is a San Francisco supervisor who led a fact-finding delegation to the Philippines last week to investigate the attack on the American journalist. Gonzalez asked him about the shooting to which Haney replied, “This was at his home. He has a young daughter who was there at the time. He was going out in his backyard to feed his dogs. And he was shot multiple times. He has three bullets that are still inside his body, one near his spine and one in his face.”
• Haney added later that, “He has no doubt that this was the Philippine Army that targeted him. We got to meet with his colleagues and his family and his friends while we were there. They told us that a number of them were also visited by the Army on the same day, but they weren’t home. He had experienced escalating threats to his life from the military in the lead-up to the assassination attempt.”
• Amy Goodman asked Lee’s friend Raquel Redondiez, who accompanied Haney on the fact-finding trip about “who he was targeted by and for what?” Her reply was that “…as Matt said, he’s been facing harassment, intimidation, even death threats, for several years now, for his work organizing amongst indigenous communities in the Cordilleras.” She criticized the response of the U.S. Embassy who contacted the Philippine National Police (PNP) asking them to provide protection at the hospital. Lee’s family and colleagues believe that the PNP is part of the harassment and the intimidation that Brandon and others have faced in the last several years.

Gonzalez mentioned one report by Global Witness that claimed 30 environmental activists have been killed since Duterte became president, about 20% of all environmental activists killed globally since 2016.