Black Friday
Journalists wear black
vs killings, ‘enemy’ tag
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
Bulatlat
ENEMY OF THE STATE: New NUJP shirt satirizing military tag on media
groups as “state enemies” |
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
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