Tell us there’s no impunity

IN last Friday’s public forum dubbed "Killing of Journalists: Is There Impunity?" hosted by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), representatives of media organizations presented case summaries of the murdered journalists since 1986 to Chairperson Purificacion Valera Quisumbing, who eventually called on the Arroyo administration to act immediately to correct the perception that there is impunity in the reported killings.

While individual cases should be addressed by the police and courts, Quisumbing said it is government’s responsibility to see to it that the cases are resolved and the perpetrators eventually brought to justice.

"If the cases should remain unsolved, government will be seen as not performing its legal obligations in the human rights conventions it has ratified," she said, adding that this makes it all the more a human rights issue.

The CHR chairperson also instructed the media to bring the issue to the attention of the Presidential Committee on Human Rights, which is directly under the Office of the President and headed by the justice secretary. The committee was first created by an executive order of then Pres. Corazon Aquino, but successive administrations including Arroyo’s have continued to re-issue the order. Apparently, the committee exists, although an online search of the Arroyo-issued Administrative Order No. 29 was unable to find such document.

The committee is mandated to investigate complaints of human rights violations it receives, cases known to its members, or those that the President may assign to it. So far, there’s no word about any action being done by the committee, nor has Arroyo tapped it to look into the series of killings.

Meanwhile, please find below tables culled from the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility database on the slain journalists. Note: There’s just a slight disparity in the total number of journalists killed in the line of duty between CMFR’s data and the one reported by the Reporters Without Borders. The latter’s tally is already pegged at 52 — same as CMFR’s — but it does not yet include the latest victim, Klein Cantoneros.