Watchdog: High impunity, lack of FOI hound Philippine press freedom

BERLIN – The low prosecution rate of suspects in the killing of journalists and the failure of the government to pass a freedom of information (FOI) law are among the major issues hounding press freedom in the Philippines, according to an international press freedom watchdog.

Christian Mihr, executive director of RSF or Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) in Germany, expressed concern over the slow pace of justice for murdered journalists in the country.

“What we really see is that there is still high impunity rate and lots of journalist attacks have not been really investigated… Talking about the situation of press freedom (in the Philippines), impunity is really a serious problem,” Mihr told The STAR on Wednesday.

“Several years after the massacre in Mindanao, there are still – from time to time – killing of journalists which are not prosecuted,” he added.

Mihr was referring to the Maguindanao massacre on Nov. 23, 2009, where 32 media practitioners were killed in what was dubbed as the single worst incident of journalist killings in the world.

The Philippines slightly improved in the RSF’s World Press Freedom Index for 2014, jumping eight notches up to 141 from last year’s 149 out of 180 countries.

However, Mihr noted that the country is still near bottom of the list and considered as among the countries where journalists face a difficult situation in terms of press freedom.

Mihr scored the lack of a freedom of information law, which Aquino failed to pass during his six-year term despite initial support for it when he was campaigning in 2010.

“We were always demanding that this should be established,” said Mihr.

Journalist killings

The RSF said there were at least three confirmed journalist killings in the Philippines in 2014.

“(The list) includes only cases in which Reporters Without Borders has clearly established that the victim was killed because of his/her activities as a journalist. It does not include cases in which the motives were not related to the victim’s work or in which a link has not yet been confirmed,” it said.

The organization has yet to release its data for 2015 killings in the country.

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which ranked the Philippines as the third country with most journalists killed since 1992, said there are six unconfirmed cases of journalist killings in the country this year.

CPJ also ranked the country as fourth in its impunity index for 2015.

“Justice for the 32 media victims and 26 others slaughtered in the 2009 massacre in Maguindanao appears more elusive than ever. No one has yet been convicted of the crime and, after six years of protracted legal proceedings, the suspected mastermind has now died of natural causes,” said the CPJ.