A Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) delegation was in the Philippines in early 2009. A CPJ delegation visited the Philippines last August and met Philippine officials, and observed that because the killers of journalists have literally “gotten away with murder,” the justice system is itself on trial, with the Ampatuan town Massacre being a turning point in whether the “faltering” system can still be fixed.
The delegations have discovered that, again officially, there’s a commitment to finding the killers of journalists. It was true even of the Arroyo regime, despite such sour notes as its justice secretary’s telling the CPJ to “go jump in the lake” last April 2010, when CPJ released its 2010 Impunity Index.
Arroyo Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez’s jeer then that the Philippines shouldn’t be paying attention to what foreigners say about the country, including the state of press freedom in it, was in response to a tendency to make it seem that it’s for the sake of the country’s image that the campaign for justice for slain journalists is being waged.
That, of course, should not be the case. What the continuing killing of journalists (four were killed this year in connection with their work, with one occurring early July, when Benigno Aquino III had already taken office) is demonstrating is how weak Philippine democracy is on the one hand, and how powerful are local warlords and politicians, as well as the military and police personnel implicated in most of the killings.
The weakness is particularly concentrated in the justice system, which not only suffers from a shortage of prosecutors, but whose prosecutors are also burdened with hundreds of cases. At the local level, both judges and prosecutors are also subject to various pressures. At its most basic, the police responsibility of building cases is hampered by some policemen’s being themselves involved in the killings as well as by police incompetence, and the resulting reliance on the testimony of witnesses.
And yet what’s needed to stop the killing of journalists is a demonstration that the killers and masterminds will be punished. It’s a tall order, impunity being deeply rooted in the Philippine justice system, which allows not only the killers of journalists but hundreds of other murderers to go unpunished. But it’s either stop the killings or allow them to continue to the detriment of this country’s people and its already tattered democracy. Despite the admitted lapses and the unethical and unprofessional conduct of some journalists, a free press is a vital means of monitoring both the quality of life and of governance in any society including, perhaps especially, this one. (Bulatlat.com)
