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Nov. 16, 2004

Government should act on media killings

Free speech is to a great people what winds are to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away the elements of disease and bring new elements of health; and where speech is stopped, miasma is bred, and death comes fast.-Henry Ward Beecher, American author and editor

Unless the administration of President Arroyo wants this miasma to spread, for our so-called democracy to whither, it's imperative that it does something concrete to stop the series of killings of journalists. And if and when it does, it should go beyond creating task forces or dangling rewards.

The series of killings this year has claimed the lives of 10 Filipino journalists, the latest being Davao City photojournalist Gene Boyd Lumawag and Bombo Radyo Aklan station manager Heherson Hinolan. But the government has not done anything encouraging; a couple of suspects had been arrested in previous cases, true, but the fact that not one suspect has been convicted in the 59 killings since 1986 is quite telling.

The murder of Pagadian City journalist Edgar Damalerio in 2002 is a case study of what's wrong with our justice system: the witnesses in the case, as well as the family of Damalerio, are constantly under threat, and the government has not done anything to assuage their fear. In fact, the government had removed them from the Witness Protection Program, reinstalling them only after media groups raised hell over it.

The government has taken pride in its announcements that it has allotted millions as rewards for the arrests of suspects in these killings. But it never made clear how the rewards system was going to be implemented. And the government just stopped there, apparently convinced that dangling these rewards would be taken to mean that it is doing something.

These killings did not happen in a vacuum. These killings occur in the context of the general breakdown of law and order in this country, where extrajudicial killings have become the norm. In many instances, agents of the government (policemen, soldiers, etc.) are the prime suspects in these murders.

In the case of Jolo, where Lumawag was shot, summary executions occur practically every day; according to local leaders, eight killings had occurred in Jolo in the 15 days leading to Lumawag's murder.

All over the country, people in authority and those who seek change-judges, local officials, lawyers, human-rights workers, activists, etc.-are being murdered with impunity. In such a violent environment, where the vanguards of democracy are constantly under attack-and where, as a consequence, the people turn to the press to seek succor-the press becomes a logical target of the violence.

The escalating attacks against journalists are usually the result of the stepped-up assault against civil liberties. Indeed, intimidating the press ensures the continued violation of civil liberties. Our horrible experience with the Marcos dictatorship bears this out.

In their fight for press freedom, journalists cannot find a better ally in the Filipino people, the ultimate victim of these assaults on press freedom and civil liberties.

The government needs to reassert itself and the democratic ideals that it's supposed to protect. If it's losing control of law and order-and apparently, it is-it needs to wrest it back. The administration can do that by ensuring the arrest and prosecution of suspects in these killings, and to hold accountable those tasked to bring about justice but failed. And the Arroyo administration needs to do it fast, considering that more journalists-half of them from Mindanao-have died annually under it than in the previous ones since 1986.

We journalists have the responsibility to remain steadfast in our commitment to the public. Just as the courageous "mosquito press" during the Marcos years exposed the rot of the regime, we need the winds of press freedom to blow away the infirmities of our democracy.

-National Union of Journalists of the Philippines