LGBT party-list coordinator killed in Albay in suspected hate crime

The Albay coordinator for the Ang Ladlad party-list was found murdered at his residence in Oas early on Tuesday morning in what the LGBT party's founder Danton Remoto suspects is a hate crime.

 

Around 20 stab wounds were found on the neck of Dennis "Din-Din" Relato, who was assaulted so violently that one of his ears was nearly torn off.

 

Remoto, a cousin of Relato, suspects that the death was a result of a hate crime and asked the public to send emails if they had encountered Relato and "a male companion" on Monday.

 

In an e-mail to GMA News Online on Tuesday, Remoto said a scene of the crime operatives (SOCO) team conducted the investigation in Legaspi, though he could not give more details at the time of the correspondence.

 

"I also have not talked to my aunt yet; I think she is still in a state of shock," he wrote.

Ang Ladlad has supported a pending measure to impose stiffer penalties against hate crimes, with the Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch documenting 164 such cases in the country from 1996 to 2012.

Oas is a first class municipality with over sixty thousand residents in 53 barangays spread out over 26,361 hectares.  — JST/ELR, GMA News