On the 27 of the 6th, 2018, 36-year-old Julius Barellano was shot dead in his home in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, The Philippines, by two unidentified men on a motorcycle.

The former radio reporter and chairperson of Hda. Medina Farm Workers Association, a local chapter of the National Federation of Sugarcane Workers (NFSW) in the region, was a pivotal actor in leading a farmers group against illegal land grabs in the region of Sitio Medina.

Local investigations have yielded little results with suspicions that the murder was directly linked to Barellano’s activism. Barellano’s death comes within a context of similar deaths for NFSW activists in the Philippines in a climate of alleged impunity.