Thursday, August 21, 2008 Mediamen hold rally for fallen comrades By Grace L. Plata
DAVAO-based media practitioners gathered Wednesday at the Freedom Park to light candles for their fallen comrades in commemoration of the "National Day of Mourning for Slain Journalists."
Spearheaded by the Davao chapter of the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP), the participants wore black as a sign of protest against the continuing killing of journalists nationwide.
Based on the databases of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, Bulatlat, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, and the defunct Philippine Movement for Press Freedom there are already 96 mediamen who were killed or were most likely killed because of their journalism work since 1986.
The Philippine Movement for Press Freedom monitored press freedom violations in the '80s.
Locally, the most prominent cases were those of the killings of Mindanews photojournalist Gene Boyd Lumawag in 2004; journalist Marlene Garcia Esperat in 2005; and the most recent is that of radio broadcaster Fernando "Ferdie" Lintuan in December 2007.
