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By Jeannette
I. Andrade and Inday Espina-Varona
Conclusion
Only four
government officials, two of them mayors, are suspects in the
killing journalists, according to the Task Force Usig report
submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings,
Philip Alston.
But an earlier
status report, also by the same task force and provided to The
Manila Times in late 2006, showed 10 government officials, including
a governor and a congressman as possibly linked to the murders of
Filipino journalists.
TF Usig named
the officials in columns citing possible motives for the killings.
Many of the motives included reprisals for reports and commentaries
linking officials to corruption, illegal drugs, illegal gambling and
other anomalies.
The Times is
withholding the names of officials who have not yet been charged.
The 2006 TF
Usig report also listed four mayors, two barangay chairmen and two
officials of a government agency as possible masterminds in the
killings.
Blurring of
lines
Another report
by a media group shows a much higher count, with 15 of 49 murders
involving government officials at various levels of the bureaucracy
or known assets of government officials.
The Philippine
National Police (PNP) lists 26 killings since 2001, the year
President Arroyo assumed power.
The Freedom
Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ) lists 28. The National Union of
Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), which only takes out a name
when conviction proves a murder stemmed from reasons other than
professional work, lists 49 journalist victims.
The NUJP
report lists the two mayors, the two barangay officials and two
agriculture department officials.
It also lists
four police officers, an ex-Marine sergeant linked to the line
agency officials, a Navotas jail guard, a member of an anticrime
task force, an asset of a convicted police officer, and ex-soldier
turned bodyguard, bodyguards of a mayor’s son and an Army sergeant
and his men.
“That many
journalists died for their criticism of rights abuses and mounting
crime and corruption in their communities, coupled with the fact
that many government officials are among the suspects, reflects the
blurring of lines between crime and governance and the growing use
of violence to cover-up for official government misdeeds,” the
NUJP warned in a report early this year. The group has forwarded the
report to the UN special rapporteur.
Charged
Of the
officials named in the TF Usig 2006 list, only two mayors, the two
barangay executives, and two Department of Agriculture officials
were actually charged for the killings: Dingalan, Aurora Mayor Jaime
Ylarde; Lezo, Aklan Mayor Alfredo Arsenio; Barangay chairman
Edilberto Mendoza of Bauan, Batangas; Barangay chairman Ephraim
Englis of General Santos City; and Department of Agriculture Central
Mindanao Finance Officer Osmeña Montaner and Regional Accountant
Estrella Sabay.
Only the cases
against Arsenio and Dingalan progressed. The rest were either
acquitted by the court, had their cases thrown out by a judge
without arraignment or walked through a charge dismissal by the
Department of Justice.
Arsenio, a
former military intelligence officer, is the suspect in the November
13, 2004, killing of Kalibo, Aklan, Bombo Radyo manager and anchorman,
Herson Hinolan.
A local
prosecutor reduced the offense to homicide, enabling the local
official to post a bail of P40,000 for his temporary liberty.
Media groups
helped Hinolan’s family file a motion for reinvestigation. On
September 20, 2006, Judge Virgilio Pacman of Branch 7 of the Aklan
Regional Trial Court, upgraded the crime to murder and issued an
arrest warrant. Manhunt operations have been launched and a hold
departure order has been issued against him but the mayor remains at
large.
Ylarde is a
suspect in the killing of Starline Times Recorder’s Philip
Agustin. The hearing of the Agustin case has been moved to Manila
but journalists covering the trial were banned from the courtroom
last month.
A Tacurong
court threw out the case against Montaner and Sabay. But Task Force
Usig chief, Deputy Director General Avelino Razon Jr. told The Times
that a reinvestigation into the killing of Marlene Esperat in 2005
indicates charges would be filed against the two agriculture
officials.
Society’s
loss
The Freedom
Fund for Filipino Journalists (FFFJ), which has been instrumental in
the reinvestigation of the Esperat case, notes that her murder was
a great loss for society given her crusade against government
corruption.
A report by
the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), which acts
as the FFFJ secretariat, said Esperat was a resident ombudsman for
the Department of Agriculture before taking up journalism.
“While
inside the DA, Esperat discovered that the fertilizers that the
regional office were giving to the local farmers were insufficient,
inferior, and far cheaper than what was originally listed at the
official budget of the department,” the CMFR report said.
“During her
employment in the DA Central Mindanao from 1987 to 2004, she
uncovered numerous cases of graft and corruption practices . . .
worked on numerous cases, such as the unremitted government’s
share of Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) premiums of DA
Central Mindanao employees . . . exposed the alleged deliberate
burning of the DA office in Cotabato City on May 7, 1998,” the
report noted.
The burning of
the Cotabato City DA office was apparently linked to cases filed
against Montaner and his companions.
“Esperat’s
murder has been considered a real national interest issue, not just
a press freedom matter,” CMFR stressed. “Montaner and Sabay’s
connection in the killing of Esperat, and the cases left by the
journalist, could pave the way for a deeper scrutiny on the alleged
massive corruption inside the DA up to the highest posts.”
CMFR, citing
the exposes made and cases filed by Esperat, said the corruption
inside the DA, “not only involves the two suspected slay
masterminds, but also several high-ranking national officials, in
connection with the so-called multimillion-peso fertilizer scam.”
Another
suspect, this time in the July 31, 2004, killing of Roger Mariano of
dzJC Aksyon Radyo in Laoag City, was arrested only after he was also
implicated in the murder of a mayor.
In the case of
PO1 Guillermo Wapile, convicted killer of Pagadian
editor-broadcaster Edgar Damalerio, the police chief dismissed for
letting him escape from jail, was later hired as the chief security
consultant of the city mayor.
The startling
appointment, which happened as the Damalerio family were temporarily
thrown out of the Witness Protection Program (WPP), prompted a media
delegation to seek Justice Raul Gonzalez’s help.
Alarmed,
Gonzalez had to call the mayor and warn him he would be responsible
for any harm that befalls the Damalerio family and the witnesses to
his murder.
The warning
apparently went unheeded. Months after, witness Edgar Amoro was
gunned down in Pagadian City. A suspect has been arrested for
Amoro’s murder but threats also hound his family, which has gone
into hiding.
Unconquered
realm
The late Sen.
Blas Ople, a former journalist, warned way back in 1996 that as
modernization ideals clash with entrenched feudal worldviews,
provincial journalists would increasingly come under fire.
Ople said the
killings are part of the “epic clash” between what is called
“modernization ideals”—including public accountability of
those in power—“and the hard crust of custom in a feudal society
which holds the bosses above criticism.”
Ople discussed
an “unconquered realm” in the countryside, “where feudal
values remain as deeply entrenched as during earlier, colonial
times.”
Feudal hawks,
Ople said, often view contrary beliefs as subversive influences that
ought to be rooted out and exact severe retribution from those who
challenge their authority.
“That is the
reason journalists get targeted, for daring to speak against
authority who may also be coddling gambling lords, drug traffickers
and illegal loggers, along with corrupt law-enforcement agencies,
all of whom have the means to hire goons or private armies,” Ople
wrote in a February 16, 1996, column for Manila Bulletin.
The senator
pointed out that modernization ideals travel best on free newspapers
and free broadcasts.
“To the
extent that these ideals will continue to endanger entrenched power
and privilege, to that extent will journalists continue to pay with
their lives for exercising freedom of the press in the
countryside,” Ople warned.
Ten years
hence, his words ring true.
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