CPJ ranks RP as ‘most murderous for journalists’

BAGUIO CITY — The news was not so good for Filipino journalists as the World Press Freedom Day was celebrated yesterday.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has identified the Philippines as the most murderous country for journalists since 2000, followed by Iraq, Colombia, Bangladesh and Russia.

Based on five years of death records beginning Jan. 1, 2000, CPJ said a majority of those killed on duty did not die in crossfire or while covering dangerous assignments but were hunted down and killed in retaliation for their work.

It further said that 121 of the 190 journalists who died on duty worldwide since 2000 were killed in this manner. In 85 percent of those slayings, the killers have gone unpunished, it added.

CPJ, a nonpartisan, non-profit organization dedicated to defending press freedom worldwide, said the five most murderous countries account for nearly half of the murder toll. Of the 58 murders in those nations, all had been committed with impunity.

"By failing to investigate and punish the killers, the governments in these five countries embolden all those who seek to silence the press through violence," CPJ executive director Ann Cooper said in a release. "The violence becomes self-perpetuating and the free flow of information is cut off."

In the Philippines, 18 journalists have been slain for their work since 2000. All had reported on government and police corruption, drug dealing, and the activities of crime syndicates.

Many were rural radio commentators or reporters who were ambushed in drive-by assassinations.

Local journalists attribute the violence to a nationwide breakdown in law and order, the wide circulation of illegal arms, and the failure to convict a single person in the murders.

One of those felled by assassins’ bullets was Edgar Damalerio, the managing editor of the weekly newspaper Zamboanga Scribe and a commentator on dxKP radio station in Pagadian City. There were five other journalists murdered since 2000 in Mindanao, a region rife with crime and conflict.

"In the Philippines, where press freedom flourishes more than almost anywhere on the continent, hired killers targeted radio and local newspaper journalists on the orders of corrupt local politicians," affirms a report by Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders).

In Iraq, on the other hand, the leading cause of death among journalists was crossfire. But even there, the CPJ found that 13 of the 41 work-related deaths were homicides. More than half of those killed were Iraqi journalists who were targeted by insurgents because of their affiliation — real or perceived — with coalition forces, foreign organizations or political entities.

Several of the slain journalists had been threatened beforehand, CPJ said. Dina Mohammed Hassan, an Iraqi reporter for the local Arabic language television station Al-Hurriya, had reportedly received three letters warning her to stop working. In October 2004, she was killed in a drive-by shooting in front of her Baghdad residence.

The CPJ has also recorded that two of the victims in Iraq had been held hostage by armed groups. Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni was murdered in August 2004 by kidnappers from a militant group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq.

In Colombia, 11 journalists have been killed while reporting on such subjects as drugs, paramilitary organizations and local corruption.

At Radio Meridiano-70 in the town of Arauca in Colombia, two journalists were killed in less than a year. Luis Eduardo Alfonso was killed as he arrived at work one morning in March 2003, just weeks after he had been threatened by members of a right-wing paramilitary army. A year earlier, gunmen also shot and killed the owner of Radio Meridiano-70, Efrain Varela Noriega, who had alerted listeners to the presence of paramilitary fighters in the region days before he was killed.

In Bangladesh, where the CPJ said journalists are routinely beaten, harassed and threatened while carrying out their work, nine journalists have been slain. A CPJ delegation traveled to Bangladesh last year to urge the government to prosecute those responsible.

Manik Saha, a veteran correspondent of the daily New Age and a contributor of the BBC’s Bengali-language service, was brutally murdered in January 2004 when assailants threw a bomb at his rickshaw in Khulna. The underground leftist group Janajuddha claimed responsibility for the killing.

In Russia, the CPJ found that at least seven journalists died in contract-style slayings in direct reprisal for their work investigating organized crime and government corruption.

Most of the victims, the CPJ said, were print journalists investigating organized crime and government corruption, while a few were broadcast journalists who had criticized police or influential politicians.

Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Russia, was gunned down outside his office in Moscow in July 2004. He had written a number of books and articles on Russia’s shadowy business tycoons, organized crime and the conflict in Chechnya.

"The problem is enormous but not intractable," Cooper said. "Governments must recognize what’s at stake is not only justice for those murdered but also the collective right of society to be informed... Governments, particularly those in the five most murderous countries, must devote the resources and exercise the will to solve these crimes." – With AFP