Damalerio killing
Main Suspect Now Wears Surgical Mask; is Allegedly Hunting Witnesses

The former policeman suspected of killing journalist Edgar Demalerio last May now wears a surgical mask to elude arrest and is hunting the two witnesses vital to the slay case.

By Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility
Re-posted by Bulatlat.com

The former policeman suspected of murdering a journalist last May 2002 now wears a surgical mask to elude arrest and is hunting the two witnesses vital to the slay case.

This was according to Edgar Amoro, one of the two vital witnesses to the 13 May 2002 killing of journalist Edgar Damalerio in Pagadian City, southern Philippines.

Amoro told CMFR the main suspect in the killing, former Police Officer 1 Guillermo Wapille, was in the city last June 20 and was looking for him and the other witness, Edgar Ongue.

Wapille, whose face has been surgically changed according to Amoro, has been in and out of Pagadian since he escaped police custody on 28 June.

“In fact,” Amoro said, “four weeks ago, I was informed that Wapille and seven others were in (nearby) San Pablo town… and their mission is to kill me and Ongue.”

Amoro said he has not received any death threats recently, but he is taking more precautions especially now that Wapille, who “is part of a large criminal syndicate in Zamboanga del Sur and has lots of money to surgically change his face,” is roaming Pagadian and nearby areas to look for the witnesses.

Background

Damalerio, a  radio commentator and managing editor of the “Zamboanga Scribe,” was shot dead while on-board his jeep in Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur, 780 kilometers south of Manila. He was killed near the city police headquarters and the city hall.

Despite positive identification by witnesses Amoro and Edgar Ongue who were with Damalerio at the time of the killing, then Pagadian City police chief Superintendent Asuri Hawani filed murder charges against another person.  He did not file charges against, and did not even investigate his then subordinate Wapille.

PNP Chief Gen. Hermogenes Ebdane, Jr, dismissed both Hawani and Wapille from the police service on 8 January, six months after Damalerio’s family filed administrative and criminal charges against the two.

The dismissals, however, were not acted upon. Calls by the Fund For Filipino Journalists to police officials in Pagadian city revealed that the police authorities had not enforced the order.

According to the CMFR database, Damalerio was the 35^th Filipino journalist to be killed in the line of duty since 1986, and the 52^nd since 1961. The CMFR database also shows that Damalerio was the third journalist to be killed in Pagadian City since 1999.

Since 1961, only two cases have been verified to have been solved and which resulted in the imprisonment of the killers. However, since 1986, not one case has been solved. An average of three journalists have been killed since then per year, despite the decrease in the number of slain journalists worldwide.

"The Damalerio case represents an opportunity to break the cycle of impunity and catch the killer," said Sheila Coronel, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, during a January 7 police- media dialogue. “It is a rare opportunity for us to get the killer of a journalist,” she said.

The increasing number of journalists killed in the country because of their work and the constant number of journalists killed per year prompted Lin Neumann, Asia representative of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, to declare that the Philippines “has become the most dangerous place for journalists,” worse than other press hotspots elsewhere such as Colombia, Algeria, Pakistan, and Russia.

"Nowhere else in the world have more journalists been killed in the last 15 years than in the Philippines," Neumann said during the January 7 discussions.

The Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ), composed of the Center for Community Journalism and Development (CCJD), the CMFR, Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP/Association of Broadcasters of the Philippines), the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), and the Philippine Press Institute (PPI), held a  dialogue on 7 January with Philippine National Police officials over the slow progress of the Damalerio case as well as on the unsolved cases of Filipino journalists killed in the line of duty.

The FFFJ, composed of several Manila-based media organizations, has also sent several letters appealing to the authorities for the resolution of the case.

The FFFJ was launched during the January 7 media dialogue. According to Melinda Quintos de Jesus, executive director of CMFR, FFFJ was organized in response to the increasing number of cases of killings of journalists that remain unsolved in a country that claims to have the freest press in the region.

“There’s a clear need to establish a kind of fund for journalists killed while doing their work,” she said. Reposted by Bulatlat.com

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