This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 10, April 17-23, 2005
Black Friday
While being tagged by the
military as “enemies of the state,” three Filipino journalists have been killed
and three others wounded since the start of the year. To denounce these attacks,
media groups called on all journalists to wear black every Friday, black being
the symbol of democracy’s death.
BY DABET CASTAÑEDA Black, a symbol of death –
and also defiance - may just get the message across. Media groups launched April
15 Black Friday – a campaign to protest the escalating attacks against Filipino
journalists and the recent statement of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)
tagging some media organizations as “enemies of the state.” The campaign calls on all
journalists in Metro Manila and in the provinces to wear black shirts every
Friday thereafter, with black being the symbol of press freedom’s death.
The symbolic protest was
launched on the heels of the shooting of another radio broadcaster in Mindanao,
southern Philippines – where many recent media killings have taken place. The
broadcaster, Alberto Martinez, was shot in the back by a lone gunman past 8 p.m.
on April 11 in Barangay (village) Oasis, Kabacan, North Cotabato. He remains in
critical condition at the Davao Medical Center. Martinez is a blocktime
anchorperson of Radyo Natin, a community radio in Cotabato affiliated with the
Manila Broadcasting Company, the National Union of Journalists of the
Philippines (NUJP) said in a news release. He is also a pastor of the Church of
God World Mission. 6th
journalist He is the sixth journalist
to be attacked this year. Two of his colleagues in Mindanao survived slay
attempts: Maximo Quindao of Tagum City’s Mindanao Truck News and Pablo
Hernandez, a columnist of the Metro Manila tabloid, Bulgar. Also slain were Edgar Amoro,
freelence broadcaster and eyewitness to the murder of Pagadian editor Edgar
Damalerio; Arnulfo Villanueva of Asian Star Express Balita in Cavite; and
Marlene Garcia-Esperat, a columnist of the Midland Review in Tacurong
City, South Cotabato. In a press conference April
13 at the Bayview Hotel in Manila, two visiting journalists from Reporters Sans
Frontiers (RSF or Reporters without Borders) said the attack on Martinez is
proof that journalists in the Philippines remain unsafe. One of the two, Vincent
Brossel, chief of RSF’s Asia Pacific desk, told reports “We’re not getting near
the solution.” “Enemy”
tag In the same news
conference, NUJP chair Inday Espina-Varona said, “Attacks against journalists
are reflective of the general social situation.” Espina-Varona was referring
to the AFP’s branding of active press organizations as “enemies of the state” as
shown in a power point presentation (PPT) and manuscript by the military titled
“Knowing The Enemy.” In the PPT, the AFP tagged the NUJP along with labor,
peasant and human rights groups, as fronts of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP), which, in turn, has been tagged a “terrorist group” by both
the Arroyo administration and the U.S. state department. “It is not our fingers that
are on the trigger,” the NUJP chair said. In fact, she added, military and
police agents are the ones implicated in the deaths of some of many of their
colleagues. A consolidated report from
the office of Police Sr. Supt. Rodolfo B. Mendoza Jr., officer-in-charge of the
Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), showed that a group of
village officials were responsible for the death of columnist-reporter Arnel
Manalo and broadcaster Elpidio Binoya. Meanwhile, a murder case
was filed against an active police officer, SPO4 Apolonio Medrano, for the death
of radio commentator Roger Mariano. A former city mayor, Jose
Arcangel Jr., was implicated in the killing of another radio commentator, Rowell
Edrinal. Military intelligence
agents, on the other hand, are the prime suspects in the murder of lady
journalist Marlene Garcia-Esperat. Human
rights issue Branding journalists as
“enemies” only puts media practitioners in further danger, said Red Batario of
the Center for Community Journalism Development (CCJD) who represented the
Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ) in the press conference.
Batario added that the
attacks on media are linked to the general human rights situation in the country
as he cited the mounting extra-judicial killings of activists, lawyers, judges
and human rights workers. The party-list group Bayan
Muna (People First) which has three representatives in 13th Congress
has documented 32 politically-motivated killings since the start of the year.
Five others have been abducted and remain missing to this day, Bayan Muna
documents show. Impunity Meanwhile, RSF news editor
Jean Francois Julliard said the No. 1 reason for the continuous attacks on the
media is the “culture of impunity.” “The main problem is the
absence of conviction of journalists’ killers and the inability to prosecute and
punish the masterminds of these murders,” he said. The visiting journalist
noted that in the RSF’s investigation on the killing of Filipino journalists, no
one has been held accountable for any of the cases. “Nobody has been arrested
so the killers think they can repeat what they do,” he said. The RSF team stayed in the
country for one week to probe into the media killings in the Philippines. The
country is second to Iraq as the most dangerous place for journalists in the
world. The RSF investigation
concentrated on the cases in Mindanao where five media men were killed in 2004
alone. The team visited General Santos City, Cagayan de Oro and Tacurong, South
Cotabato. They also went to Sta. Cruz, Laguna to look into the case of slain
broadcaster Noel Villarente. The RSF will release its
report next month. Bulatlat © 2004 Bulatlat
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Journalists wear
black vs killings, ‘enemy’ tag
Bulatlat