Philippines: A Killing Fields of Journalists

The main reason for the Philippine press’s failure to cover human-rights issues substantially and, in the process, contribute to the promotion of respect for human rights, is the fact that the Philippine press itself is a victim of various forms of human-rights violations.

By Carlos H. Conde*
Bulatlat.com

It is one of the glaring – and perhaps unsettling – ironies of the Philippine press that, while its ranks is being attacked, harassed, intimidated and threatened, it hasn’t found the courage nor the conviction to report thoroughly and conscientiously on the human-rights situation in my country. By that I mean reports that plumb the depths of the issue, stories that not only report the body count but also expose the method in the madness, the motive for the carnage, and the seemingly pathological revulsion toward dissent that has characterized the regimes in the Philippines for decades now.

Yet one can say that that is perhaps why the Philippines press’s coverage of human-rights issues leaves much to be desired: it is much too threatened, too intimidated to speak out.

Some statistics are in order, therefore:

• Just last week, on Dec. 2, broadcaster Nelson Nadura of radio station DYME in the province of Masbate was shot dead by still unidentified gunmen. He was the seventh journalist killed this year.¹

• Since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in January 2001, 14 journalists have been murdered. ²

• Since 1986, after the fall of Marcos, 72 journalists have been murdered. ³

• Since 1972, the year Marcos declared martial law nationwide, 104 have been murdered. ⁴

• On an annual basis, the murder rate of journalists under Arroyo is 4.6. Under Marcos’s 14 years, it was 2.5. Under Corazon Aquino’s six years, it was 5.6. ⁵

The seven murders in 2003 are the highest number ever.

This series of murders of journalists has drawn condemnation from media groups around the world. After President Arroyo announced that she has instructed the police to do everything it can to find Nadura’s killers, Ann Cooper, the executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, issued a statement that said "President Arroyo's statement will be no more than empty words unless those who assassinate journalists are brought to justice." ⁶

The International Federation of Journalists was equally stinging in its criticism. “The IFJ believes that the situation in the Philippines is out of control and that it should be treated with the highest level of concern,” said Christopher Warren, the IFJ’s president. ⁷ “There is no worse form of censorship than violence. It is essential that journalists are free from threats of violence and allowed to work in an environment free from fear,” he added.

It is imperative that we keep these facts, statistics and conclusions in mind when we talk about human rights and democracy in the Philippines. Obviously, it would be impossibly difficult for a journalist in my country to report, let alone expose, the human-rights violations in his midst when he himself is being violated.

Hernan dela Cruz, editor and publisher of The Zamboanga Scribe, a weekly in Pagadian City, in the southern Philippines, knows this only too well. Dela Cruz himself had been harassed and threatened, but the threats were never as worrisome as the ones that came after his managing editor, Edgar Damalerio, was murdered, allegedly by a policeman, in May 2002. (Other journalists had been killed in the same city prior to Damalerio.)

Dela Cruz told me earlier this year: “There seems to be a code of silence in my city. Nobody wants to talk about the violence and the threats to journalists. The community is not concerned about us. Since Edgar’s death, there has been a marked decrease in critical press stories. Nobody dares to touch stories that are controversial. Newspapers used to be very critical, now they only print safe and so-called commercial stories. Journalists are living in fear.” ⁸

Last month alone, a series of attacks and intimidation occurred in different areas of Mindanao, highlighting once again the precarious situation of journalists on the island, where most of the attacks against the press take place.

On Nov. 23, armed men barged into the offices of Radyo Natin, a small radio station in a town called Lupon, in Davao Oriental province. The men beat up Jun Castro, an employee. They wanted to know the whereabouts of the station’s owner and anchorman because, according to Castro, the men would kill his colleagues. ⁹

Earlier, on Nov. 17, the police chief of Tangub City, Roberto Destura Jr., challenged Richard Manego, a reporter for radio station DXDD, to a gun duel because Manego kept on reporting and commenting on the continued presence of a form of illegal gambling in that city. A few minutes later, Destura called up another DXDD reporter, Bethser Dablo, and verbally harassed her, also for reporting on the issue. ¹⁰

That same month, three broadcasters of DXCP in General Santos City were harassed by unidentified people by way of publishing and circulating leaflets accusing the journalists of being members of the outlawed New People’s Army and the Community Party of the Philippines. ¹¹

These are just some of the most recent cases. There have been many other similar, if not deadlier, incidents in the past,¹² but the above incidents are enough to raise the hackles of Filipino journalists, such as myself. In a statement I released (as a chapter coordinator of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines) following these harassments, I said the situation is worrisome because, as these incidents clearly show, journalists working in the provinces and in relatively small media outlets are easy prey. ¹³

The attacks, I wrote, were “meant to discourage journalists from doing their jobs, especially at a time when so much corruption and bureaucratic incompetence is being committed. In particular, the labeling as communists of journalists who dare to expose the ills of Philippine society was meant to suppress dissent and subvert democracy.”

The predicament of Filipino journalists, therefore, flies in the face of the myth being peddled that the Philippines has the freest press in Southeast Asia. I would agree with the general description of our press as free-wheeling, rambunctious, even colorful and flamboyant to the point of being irresponsible. But free? That would be a lie.

If it were free, if it were unshackled by fear and intimidation, then there wouldn’t be a dearth of stories tackling the human-rights situation in my country, where activists are being murdered by the machineries of the state (i.e. the military) left and right and with terrifying impunity.

Karapatan, a national human-rights alliance, said in a statement released last week that two cases of human-rights violations are being committed in the Philippines every day. In a period of 35 months, the group has documented 183 cases of murders and massacres victimizing 271 people.

Based on the group’s documentation, the Arroyo administration has committed 2,461 cases of rights violations in three years, victimizing 169,530 people, 18,515 families, 70 communities, 196 households. These staggering figures include those victimized by the government’s wars in Mindanao, which have displaced tens of thousands of people, hundreds of them still in refugee centers.

In my city alone, in Davao City, state-supported vigilantes, members of the so-called Davao Death Squad, have killed dozens of people – mostly suspected of petty crimes – in the past five years. These victims were regarded by such people as the mayor as dregs of society and, thus, they deserve to die. ¹⁴

According to Amnesty International, seven Filipino children are among those on death row. ¹⁵ The group also condemned the Philippine government for reinstating the death penalty and for not doing enough for human rights.

“Despite an extensive range of institutional and procedural safeguards, complaints mechanisms and legal sanctions, suspected perpetrators of serious human rights violations were rarely brought to justice and a climate of impunity persisted. Failures in the administration of justice derived repeatedly from unjustified use of arrests without warrant, mainly against ordinary criminal suspects but also against suspected insurgents,” AI said.

These are alarming figures and unsettling facts. But you hardly read them in the papers or hear them being uttered in the networks. It’s as if all these violations never existed.

It is my contention that the primary factor for the Philippine press’s failure to cover human-rights issues substantially and, in the process, contribute to the promotion of respect for human rights, is the fact that the Philippine press itself is a victim of various forms of human-rights violations.

Aside from the physical attacks and intimidation, most Filipino journalists live in dire conditions: they are overworked and underpaid, mostly as stringers and correspondents for the dailies paid on a per-column inch basis. This predicament narrows their choices in their profession. They would rather write stories that are “safe” and, thus, sell. And because human rights is not a sensational or sexy beat, it is not a beat at all, so that hardly any attention is being given to it.

This forces the journalist to look elsewhere for stories. If he wants to feed his family, he would have the tendency to become cozy with his sources, who are -- in most cases in the provinces -- the military, the police and government officials. And because human rights in the Philippines is mainly viewed as a concept professed by the Left -- ergo anybody, according to the state’s thinking, who devotes too much time and effort writing about it must be sympathetic to the causes of the Left – a reporter who gets friendly with his sources from the police and military would be hard put to write anything about these violations, lest he starve or, worse, thought of as a communist.

(It is important to point out that, most human-rights violations in the Philippines are committed by the military, the police and paramilitary groups. ¹⁷)

As these facts indicate, the human rights situation in the Philippines is serious, but the one institution that can help improve the situation – the press – is not living up to its duties and responsibilities.

In the end, this timidity is a disservice not only to those who suffered but to democracy in general. There cannot be a democracy in a society where journalists operate in a climate of fear and intimidation. Bulatlat.com

(This is the country report submitted by the author during the “Regional Workshop on Media, Human Rights and Democracy” held at Cumsaed River Kwai Resort, Kanchanaburi Province, Thailand, from December 8 to 11, 2003. The workshop was organized by the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA).)

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Notes:

1. Based on monitoring by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, a Manila-based media watchdog.

2. “Media Killings Getting Out of Control”; Dec. 6, 2003; Bulatlat.

3. Ibid. (Although monitoring by CMFR indicates that only 43 were killed. The Bulatlat.com figure includes those monitored by the Philippine Movement for Press Freedom)

4. Ibid

5. Ibid

6. Committee to Protect Journalists

7. International Federation of Journalists; letter to President Arroyo

8. Philippine Journalism Review, February 2003

9. “Armed men raid radio station,” Philippine Daily Inquirer

10. “Police officer threatens 2 journalists,” MindaNews

11. “Radio reporters cry harassment,” Sun.Star General Santos

12. For more on these cases, check out PinoyPress, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and CMFR.

13. “NUJP condemns series of attacks, harassment vs. Mindanao journalists,”

14. “Teenagers perish in Davao’s killing fields,” Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

15. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA350142003?open&of=ENG-PHL“Something hanging over me-child offenders under sentence of death,” Amnesty International

16. AI Annual Report – Philippines

17. Human Rights Statistics, Armed Forces of the Philippines, June 2002. According to this document released by the AFP’s public affairs office, there were 28, 295 alleged human-rights violations cases from 1988 to June 2002. Of the number, almost a third (9,927) were committed by police officers. 3,150 were committed by members of the military. 1,522 committed by paramilitary groups, which are mainly formed, controlled and financed by the military. 2,413 were committed by the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

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