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Saturday, January 29, 2005
Journalists group: Pressure government to solve media killings
AN OFFICIAL of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) urged the public to put more pressure on the government to solve the rampant killings of journalists in the country.
Carlos Conde, NUJP secretary general, said the NUJP is now collating information that would be presented to law enforcement agencies concerned to prompt them to act on the cases.
Conde, a correspondent of the New York Times, was in Iloilo City Thursday with the representatives of the International Fact-Finding and Safety Mission in the Philippines of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the NUJP.
He was joined by Australian Gerard Noonan, who is with IFJ's Asia-Pacific office based in Australia and a senior writer of Sydney Morning Herald, and Indonesian Rustam Fachri Mandayun, of the Indonesian Journalists Association (AJI) and former executive editor of Tempo, Indonesia's most influential news weekly. NUJP-Iloilo chair Ma. Diosa Labiste was also a member of fact-finding mission.
They met with the families of slain Panay journalists Severino Arcones and Herson Hinolan of Bombo Radyo and Rolando Ureta of Radio Mindanao Network.
Also present were the family members of Eddie Suede and Noel Teneso of Bombo Radyo and Josef Nava of Life Today.
During the meeting, Conde said, the families expressed their common frustration on the slow resolution of the cases.
Though cases were already filed, the police still failed to solve these. Witnesses were also constantly threatened.
There has been a failure in both the police and the judiciary to solve cases, he added.
Mandayun said the Philippines has the same problem as Indonesia. If countries would unite, we would probably solve the problem, he said.
The final leg of the mission is Manila, where the IFJ delegates will meet with officials of the NUJP to discuss the killings, the responses both by the government and the media community, and what needs to be done.
The delegates will present their preliminary findings of the nationwide mission during a press conference in Manila on Jan. 31 at 10 a.m.
The mission is part of the IFJ's international campaign to protect journalists. The Philippines has attracted considerable attention the past few years because of the increasing number of journalists murdered. Last year alone, 13 journalists were murdered.
Not one of these cases have been solved.(Lory Ann Bilbao)
(January 29, 2005 issue)
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