Maguindanao Massacre, Year 4:
23 murders in 40 months of PNoy

THE NATION marks tomorrow, Nov. 23, the fourth anniversary of the Maguindanao Massacre, where 32 journalists were killed in the worst single-day act of violence against the media ever recorded in history.

In part to honor the memory of the massacre victims, human rights and media groups across the world will also mark the day as the “International Day to End Impunity.”

But 40 months after President Benigno S. Aquino III promised to end the reign of extrajudicial killings that he had inherited from the Arroyo administration, the Philippines remains one of the deadliest places in the world for journalists, and ranks No. 3 in the “Global Impunity Index.”

The son of a former president who was widowed when her husband, a prominent opposition leader, was assassinated, President Aquino came to power with high expectations that he would act with dispatch and resolve on the unsolved murders of activists, lawyers, church workers, and journalists.

He himself promised as much — and more. In his first State of the Nation Address or SONA, he vowed that his administration would work to usher in an era of “swift justice.”

“Kapayapaan at katahimikan po ang pundasyon ng kaunlaran (Peace and order are the foundations of progress),” Aquino said in his first SONA. “Habang nagpapapatuloy ang barilan, patuloy din ang pagkakagapos natin sa kahirapan (So long as there is gunfire, so too will we continue to be impoverished).”

Aquino did busy himself trying to address the country’s economic woes. In the first half of his term, Aquino and his economic managers assiduously sought and in time earned the Philippines unanimous upgrades from the world’s most creditable ratings agencies, notably Fitch, Moody’s, Standard & Poor.

Parallel to that, however, were the country’s lower and lower scores from the world’s most creditable human rights monitoring agencies — in large measure because of the rising numbers of media murders, and the slow, tepid results of official action on the cases.

Under Aquino, the Philippines has scored steadily dipping ratings in recent years from international groups monitoring the state of human rights, media freedom, and freedom of expression such as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Asia, and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance.

In fact, during Aquino’s first 40 months in office, from July 2010 to October 2013, at least 23 journalists were killed, among them 16 radio broadcasters and seven print journalists.

It is a trail of blood redder, thicker, and worse compared to the number of work-related media murders per year under four other presidents before him, including his late mother Corazon ‘Cory’ C. Aquino and his immediate predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Read PCIJ’s latest report, “23 journalists killed in 40 months of PNoy, worst case load since ’86“