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ZAMBOANGA CITY: A Filipino radio broadcaster was fatally shot by a
gunman on a motorcycle in an attack on Monday in southern
Philippines.
Reports said Aristeo Padrigao, who held a
program on dxRS Radyo Natin station in Gingoog City, Misamis
Oriental, was shot in the face by the gunman around 7:15 a.m.
Padrigao had just brought his 6-year-old
daughter to school when he was attacked, Radyo Natin reported. The
young girl, Areis, is a Grade 1 pupil at Don R. Baol Elementary
School in Gingoog City.
Other reports said Padrigao, 51, was attacked by
two gunmen in front of the gate of Bukidnon State University in
Gingoog City.
The gunman linked to Monday’s killing, who was
wearing a crash helmet, escaped after the attack. The motive behind
the shooting is still unknown, but media groups have condemned the
killing.
Padrigao, a hard-hitting commentator who
regularly criticized corruption in his radio program, was the 54th
journalist killed in the Philippines since President Gloria Arroyo
came to power in 2001. He was the seventh journalist murdered since
January this year.
Three journalists were killed in the Philippines
in 2007, while 12 were killed in 2006.
It was learned that Padrigao was a known critic
of Gingoog City Mayor Ruthy Guingona.
In August this year, a radio and newspaper
journalist, Ronaldo Julia, was also shot and killed in Magarao town
in Camarines Sur province in eastern Philippines. Julia was walking
toward the town plaza close to his home when he was gunned down by
an assailant, who escaped on a motorcycle driven by another man.
Julia was a reporter for dzGE radio and the
Weekly Informer owned by his older brother, Mike Julia, in Magarao,
about 250 kilometers east of Manila.
Dangerous to journalists
The Manila-based Center for Media Freedom and
Responsibility has said that the Philippines has become the “most
dangerous place for journalists next to Iraq and the most murderous
place in the world for journalists.”
The New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists, as well as the French group Reporters Without Borders,
has also branded the Philippines as the second most dangerous place
for working journalists outside of Iraq.
The Philippine government’s Task Force Against
Political Violence, or Task Force 211, expressed its dismay over yet
another media killing.
“While it is still premature to conclude that
the victim [Padrigao] was killed for his media work, the task force
nonetheless condemns this senseless, violent act,” Undersecretary
Ricardo Blancaflor, the chairman of Task Force 211, said in a
statement.
Call for help
The slain radioman, the statement added, was
also a former member of the communist New People’s Army and
engaged in logging.
Task Force 211 said that Arcile, Padrigao’s
eldest daughter, told the group that her father had been shadowed by
unidentified men before the incident.
The Padrigaos, the task force added, is looking
at politics as the possible motive behind the killing.
Blancaflor called on friends and other relatives
of Padrigao to help with the gathering of information to come up
with leads on his murder by calling Task Force 211 directly at
536-0456 or 0927-4022709.
Blancaflor said that the task force mobilizes
government agencies, political groups, sectoral organizations,
religious and civil society and the public “to pursue its goals of
prevention, investigation, prosecution and punishment of extralegal
killings and political-violence cases in the Philippines.”
-- Al Jacinto With Afp And Jefferson Antiporda
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