Justice exceedingly slow
for slain Filipino journalists

FILIPINO journalists are being killed without let-up, their children had been orphaned and their families reduced to penury, but investigators continue to falter and bungle, defense lawyers snitch every chance to delay court proceedings, and justice for the victims remains locked in exceedingly slow litigation.

This is the sad situation of the cases of media killings that Atty. Prima Quinsayas, legal counsel of the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ), rendered yesterday, May 12, second day of the PCIJ seminar on “Maguindanao and Beyond: Media Killings and the Quest for Justice.”

The seminar for Luzon and Metro Manila is the last of a series of public awareness workshops for print, broadcast, and online journalists that the PCIJ is conducting. Two other seminars had been held for journalists in the Visayas and Mindanao in Cebu and Davao in the last two months.

Quinsayas said 178 Filipino journalists had been killed since press freedom was restored in 1986, according to records of the FFFJ. Of this, a big majority or 121 cases were found to be work-related, with the victims filing their last stories about local corruption and crime.

Of the total number of media murders, 79, including the 32 media workers killed in Maguindanao in November 2009 were committed during the nine-year rule of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from 2001 to May 2010.

The body of cases is such a big pile but Quinsayas said public and private prosecutors have managed to secure convictions in only 10 cases. However, these convictions were meted out only on the gunmen or accomplices in the murders, but not against a single mastermind.

This is even though some of the convicted gunmen had already identified the masterminds who hired them to carry out the killings. These cases include that of murdered Sultan Kudarat journalist Marlene Esperat, who was responsible for exposing the multimillion peso fertilizer fund scam that implicated officials as high up as the Cabinet members of Arroyo. Esperat’s murderers were convicted on the basis of the testimony of a state witness who had also identified the masterminds. But the latter have resorted to using every legal trick in the book to parry moves to have them arrested and arraigned in court, Quinsayas averred.

In the case of the Maguindanao Massacre, she spoke of the many problems, both internal and external, that have hobbled the case, including the upheavals within the prosecution panel that culminated with the recent designation of new public prosecutors. During the Arroyo administration, Quinsayas said the prosecutors encountered difficulties in getting the cooperation of government agencies, She noted how law enforcement agencies have been generally slow in consolidating the evidence and reports they have gathered, and seemingly unwilling to pursue more witnesses to the massacre.

Many of the witnesses presented in court, she said, have actually been located and enjoined by the private prosecutors. In addition, she said the Armed Forces of the Philippines had generally ignored all requests for a complete inventory of the more than 2,000 firearms seized from the mansions of the Ampatuans and their allies days after the massacre occurred on Nov. 23, 2009.

Meanwhile, the defense lawyers of the Ampatuans have tried to delay the proceedings with countless motions at every step, in an apparent effort to buy more time for the clients and to weaken the resolve of the witnesses and the families of the victims,

Quinsayas noted a need to review the Rules of Court to make it more difficult for lawyers to engage in dilatory tactics that would only serve to delay the proceedings in a case.

Lastly, Quinsayas said that of the five pillars of the criminal justice system (law enforcement, prosecution, courts, the jail and prison system, and media and civil society), only media and civil society seem to be working well in the Maguindanao Massacre case.

The other four pillars appear to be compromised in varying degrees by the immense resources of the Ampatuans, the lead respondents in the case. Quinsayas said the situation highlights the need for media and the community to be all the more vigilant in guarding not only the other four pillars but also in sustaining media coverage of the quest for justice for murdered journalists.

At the end of the training seminar, journalist-participants presented the results of a workshop where they creatively envisioned the lessons learned from the three day training. Some opted for skits and simulated radio or television programs, while others looked for other creative ways of putting into practice whatever they learned from their colleagues in the last three days.

Luzon and Metro Manila journalists present the results of their workshop

Visayas journalists present their workshop output during the Visayas training leg last April