Counting the fallen under PNoy

PHOTO from Mei Magsino’s Facebook page

IF Mei Magsino-Lubis’ case is counted, she will be the 32nd journalist killed under the administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III.

In 2005, Magsino-Lubis was classified by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists as a “threatened” journalist.

“The warning followed a series of articles that Lubis has written on local corruption, including allegations that the governor, Armando Sanchez, has been involved in illegal gambling. She has also written reports investigating the May 30 murder of a provincial official who was investigating the governor’s activities.” – Committee to Protect Journalists, August 9, 2005

On November 20, 2013, the PCIJ published a two-part article for the fourth year of the Ampatuan Massacre, which showed that 23 journalists were killed in 40 months under PNoy, the worst case load under any Philippine president since 1986.

Fifty-two people were killed, 32 of them journalists and media workers, in the Ampatuan Massacre on November 23, 2009 – the highest death toll for journalists worldwide in a single incident.

Since November 2013, eight more journalists were killed in only 16 months, or an average of one journalist every two months.

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.

Of these 23 media-killing cases, half are already dead in the water because of failure by police investigators to identify or arrest suspects. Only four are in the trial stage. Twelve of the murder cases have no charges filed against anyone yet, while the remaining seven are still in the level of the public prosecutor or the Department of Justice (DOJ) for the determination of probable cause. In other words, less than a fifth of the media murder cases have moved beyond the investigation phase.

For sure, part of the problem lies with a criminal justice system that is in need of a serious overhaul. But there is also no doubt that for so long as the Aquino administration continues to lack clear and unequivocal policy directions on media killings, the trail of blood will only get longer.

“The killings are being encouraged by the fact that of the killers of journalists, no mastermind has been tried or punished,” says former University of the Philippines College of Mass Communications Dean Luis Teodoro, now a trustee of the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ).

“What is disappointing is that we were hoping (for better) under President Aquino, son of the two icons of democracy,” says Rowena Paraan, chairperson of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).

“He ran under a platform of anticorruption, transparency, and human rights,” she says. “We were thinking na magkakaroon ng political will and decisive action to address the killings, not only of the media, but also of the activists, priests, and lawyers.”

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