International Herald Tribune

September 9, 2004

 

Inday Espina-Varona

 

 

Unsolved killings in the Philippines

 

MANILA Philippine journalists are dropping like flies, and the authorities are blaming the victims for their own violent deaths. Four journalists murdered between July 31 and Aug. 12 brought to 55 the number killed since 1986. Astoundingly, not one of those cases has resulted in criminal conviction.

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While journalists' organizations have yet to confirm that the recent deaths were related to the victims' work, the spate of killings has the country's media in a frenzy. This year, after all, the Philippines is just one death away from last year's record of seven, a figure that tied the country with Colombia as one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists. Only in war-torn Iraq have more journalists been killed this year.

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Most of the 55 slain journalists were based in rural areas, where the rule of law is weakest and where warlords and criminal syndicates (narcotics, illegal gambling, illegal logging, smuggling) hold sway. Judges, environmentalists, anticorruption figures and human rights advocates have also been targets this past year.

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The police have novel explanations for both the killings and their failure to find the killers, as well as novel solutions to the problem - all aimed at silencing journalists and discouraging critical reporting. At a press briefing last month, a police spokesman tarred the slain journalists with a sweeping, unsubstantiated charge of having "shady backgrounds" and engaging in "extracurricular activities," a reference to some journalists' moonlighting as public relations agents and otherwise opening themselves up to charges of corruption, admittedly a problem.

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The police also say a lack of witnesses has stymied their investigations. This, they add, is because of a lack of public sympathy for reporters. By this logic, we might one day hear police officials blaming rape victims for wearing sexy clothes or kidnapping victims for flaunting their wealth.

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Where do we draw the line? When is it not O.K. to kill a journalist? Will dissent become an excuse for murder? Will hit men next train their guns on media critics of state policy, on journalists who expose official corruption?

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In the Philippines today, these are not far-fetched notions. Last month, only days after proposing that arming journalists is the solution to the rash of killings, the national police chief at the time, Hermogenes Ebdane, said that if a journalist thinks that his reporting endangers his life, he should keep silent.

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Such a suggestion belies the government's claim to represent an open, healthy democracy. In fact, the state of the journalistic profession reflects the gradual constriction of democratic space and a seeming breakdown of law and order and due process.

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It doesn't take a genius to see why witnesses are reluctant to step forward. Many criminal chieftains are also powerful local officials who hold the loyalty of a substantial number of law enforcers. In the few cases in the past where suspects have been arrested (three suspects are now in custody in connection with two of the recent killings), they have been allowed bail or have managed to escape prison. In several cases, the suspects were active or former policemen and soldiers. Power politics, not a lack of public sympathy, is the root of the government's failure to solve the killings of journalists.

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At the same time, there is the plan by the Philippine military to train soldiers to become "embedded journalists," assigned to "deliver the news like regular reporters" to broadcast stations.

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These "journalists" cannot be expected to be objective, much less critical, in the course of reporting. This plan will only tighten news management by the military, discourage enterprising media investigations and mislead the public into accepting government propaganda as legitimate news.

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President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo says she supports a free press. She has ordered law enforcers to investigate the deaths of journalists. She claims that her administration is a friend of the media. Yet her repeated orders to arrest the killers have been largely ignored. The man she assigned to investigate these killings, Angelo Reyes, the former defense secretary, has said he cannot see any "trend" in the slayings.

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Journalists have enough enemies without friends like this.

 

Inday Espina-Varona is chairwoman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.