On the 15th of October, 2018, Filipino fisherman farmer and activist, Victor Villafranca, was gunned down by a pair of unknown assailants after having finished his working day as a contract worker in a distillery in Lian, Batangas.
Villafranca was a member of Pagkakaisa ng mga Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas, known as Pamalakaya, a Fisherman Union and activist group and the local chapter of the larger Haligi ng Batanguenong Anakdagat. (Habagat)
Villafranca had been a long-time member of Habagat that worked against the militarization and the land conversion of the Lian region.
Villafranca had no previous convictions associated with his activism nor any previous threats. However, Pamalakaya denounced, at the time of the event, that Villafranca’s death was the sixth Fisher activist “slain under the Duterte administration”.