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Today is World Press Freedom Day. Credible and respected
international organizations like the United Nations (whose General
Assembly in 1993 proclaimed May 3 as World Press Freedom Day),
Freedom House and the Committee to Protect Journalists, take the
occasion to tell the people of the globe of violations of the basic
right to freedom of expression. They remind them that many
journalists brave death or jail to bring people their daily news.
The Arroyo administration has managed to earn
for itself the notoriety of being one of the topmost violators of
press freedom.
The UN Human Rights Rapporteur, Philip Alston,
is considered a villain by the administration. The Justice secretary
insulted him as nothing but a “muchacho” (a houseboy). He
reported to his UN “masters” that our country is one of the
world’s worst places for journalists.
In honor of World Press Freedom Day, Freedom
House—an institution that some cabinet secretaries ignorantly
insulted as merely a “private group”—condemned the Philippines
as a country where “violence against journalists and, in many
cases, corresponding impunity regarding past cases of abuse” is as
rife as in Mexico and Russia.
Freedom House’s credentials are known to
America’s highest leaders. Its trustees include some of the
wealthiest and most respected. Leftwing groups disparage Freedom
House for being too conservative for their taste, despite its
consistent and unwavering efforts to uphold human freedoms and the
democratic way. But rightwing Arroyo cabinet members and defenders
of the Palace—obviously without knowing what they were talking
about—dismissed the importance of this organization that Eleanor
Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, founded in
1941 along with other leading Americans to confront threats to peace
and democracy.
Freedom House’s latest report continues to
rate the Philippines as only a “Partly Free,” not a “Free”
country.
It says of the local press that “While reports
are often rooted in sensationalism and innuendo, media in the
Philippines have historically ranked among the freest, most vibrant,
and outspoken in Southeast Asia. However, press freedom in 2007
continued to face limits due to the ongoing threat posed by
journalist-targeted violence and the use of defamation suits to
silence criticism of public officials, while the arrests of 30 media
workers covering a coup attempt in November and subsequent warnings
infringed upon news coverage of a significant national event.”
The Freedom House review of the Philippine press
in 2007 named lawyer Mike Arroyo, the President’s spouse. It
mentioned his filing and then withdrawal of libel suits against
newsmen. That and the police’s arrest of journalists covering the
Peninsula Hotel caper led by Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th, the killing
of truly professional journalists at work and government threats to
arrest newsmen who do not heed government orders to leave scenes of
conflict are signs that freedom of the press in the Philippines has
been diminished.
Champions in impunity
Our country’s ugly human rights and press
freedom record is also given high marks by the New York-based
international Committee to Protect Journalists, whose representative
was told to “Go jump in the lake” by the Justice secretary.
In its report on the Impunity Index of
countries, released on Wednesday for World Press Freedom Day, CPJ
said Philippine law-enforcement authorities held the world’s sixth
poorest record in going after, arresting and prosecuting murderers
of journalists.
“Most countries on the Impunity Index are
democratic, are not at war, and have functioning law enforcement
institutions, yet journalists are regularly targeted for murder and
no one is held accountable,” says the CPJ report.
It repeated an observation many
Filipinos—including The Times—have made: That “… journalists
covering corruption, crime, and politics have repeatedly been
targeted with violence.”
“Broadcast commentators and reporters in
provincial regions are especially vulnerable. Politicians and police
have been implicated in a number of slayings, but corruption in the
local court system has stymied efforts to prosecute. No convictions
have been obtained in 24 cases,” CPJ’s report says.
The CPJ’s Impunity Index Rating for the
Philippines is “0.289 unsolved journalist murders per 1 million
inhabitants.” We rank just below Sri Lanka where, the CPJ report
says, “journalists are more likely to be assassinated than to die
in crossfire, with many of the victims ethnic Tamils.”
Shed the ugly image
Both Freedom House and the Committee to Protect
Journalists—as well as other institutions that have probed into
human rights and press freedom in our country—never fail to remark
on our “a free and vibrant press.” Freedom House says
“”media in the Philippines have historically ranked among the
freest, most vibrant, and outspoken in Southeast Asia.”
The President and her key people sometimes speak
with pride about the Philippine press. There is no reason for the
Palace to have an ugly image for having at least acquiesced in the
killing of journalists targeted as “enemies of the state” or
“political enemies.”
The Palace should not allow itself to have the
hideous image of being a promoter of impunity.
It should go after persons and groups who have
killed journalists. It should by deeds prove the militant and
leftwing human rights activists’ wrong when they cry out at
rallies that Malacańang is truly behind these killings.
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