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Monday, December 08, 2003
Journalists under fire in the Philippines (12:40 p.m.)
MANILA -- Despite having one of the freest presses in Asia, the Philippines has become dangerous for journalists, media watchdog groups say.
A record seven journalists have been assassinated in the country this year, most of them broadcasters or newspaper reporters in the provinces gunned down for their hard-hitting political commentaries.
It is the highest annual number of killings since 1986, when democracy was restored after 14 years of dictatorship, according to the Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), a local media watch group.
"Forty-three journalists have been killed over the last 17 years but not one of the murders has been resolved with satisfaction, reflecting the culture of impunity that prevails in the Philippines," Melinda de Jesus, the center's executive-director, told AFP.
"Perhaps it's because court cases for libel take a longer time than hiring a assassin," she said, adding that within the intricacies of local level politics, where radio is the most popular medium, feuds are often settled by the barrel of a gun.
"But the real explanation why the killings persists is because there is no punishment -- the killers disappear and people forget about the cases."
The seven journalist murders so far this year is double the annual average of three killed per year, based on the center's database, which shows 18 journalists gunned down from 1998 to 2003.
The latest to be killed was a radio broadcaster in the central Philippine island of Masbate, shot five times last week while leaving his station by motorcycle after presenting his news program.
"It's worrisome," said Sheila Coronel, the executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), which together with CMFR and other media groups has set up a forum to address the attacks against journalists.
The Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists acts as a support group for distressed journalists and provides immediate assistance to the families of those killed in the line of duty.
Media groups in the Philippines and abroad have closed ranks over the killings and are using a landmark case in their crusade -- the cold-blooded murder of a journalist in the country's troubled south.
Edgar Damalerio, a 32-year-old award-winning radio, TV and newspaper commentator known for his stinging exposes, was shot to death last year while driving his jeep after work along with two companions.
The witnesses identified the prime suspect as a policeman, who was arrested but escaped police custody.
The Damalerio case would have marked the first time that anyone had been charged, detained and possibly punished for killing a journalist since 1961.
Apparently dismayed by the adverse publicity received by the Philippines, tagged "the most dangerous place in the world for journalists" by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, President Gloria Arroyo last week ordered police to get cracking on the unsolved murders.
She had offered a one-million-peso (18,000-dollar) bounty for tips leading to the arrest of suspects of each murdered journalist in the past five years.
But despite that, no immediate progress has been made in the investigations, noted Paris-based press watchdog Reporters Without Borders.
Another group, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) warned that the situation "is out of control and (should) be treated with the highest level of concern".
The killings could multiply in the run-up to hotly contested national elections in May, added the CMFR's de Jesus.
But she added "it cannot chill the vigor and vitality of the Philippine media" whose freedom-fighting tradition began as early as the Spanish colonial days.
Some legislators had proposed a special law to declare killings of journalists as heinous crimes prescribing the death penalty for the murderers but this was rejected by the journalists themselves.
"We are not a special class and there are many others out there who are dying in the line of duty," de Jesus said. (AFP) |
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