EDITORIAL - End the impunity

The patriarch and key members of the Ampatuan clan are behind bars for multiple murder cases. But the arrest of those accused of planning and carrying out the massacre of 57 people, 30 of them media workers, does not appear to have served as a deterrent to those who think the best way to deal with negative publicity is by permanently silencing the messenger. Since January, four journalists have been murdered around the country while a fifth survived an attack.

Relatives of most of the victims believe the attacks were work-related, but this cannot be established unless the perpetrators are brought to justice. This is where the government has failed. Every failure reinforces the culture of impunity that encourages more people to resort to murder in dealing with the press.

Last Tuesday night, radio broadcaster Joselito Agustin was shot dead as he rode home on a motorcycle with his nephew in Barangay Barit, Bacarra town in Laoag City. Agustin, anchorman of dzJC Aksyon Radyo-Laoag, sister station of dzRH of the Manila Broadcasting Co., was murdered a month after his residential compound in Barangay Natba was strafed with rifle fire. No one has been arrested for the strafing. His superiors said Agustin had been criticizing corruption in Bacarra.

Agustin was the 139th media worker murdered in the Philippines since the restoration of democracy in 1986, and the 102nd under the Arroyo administration. He was killed just a day after Desidario Camangyan, anchorman of  Sunrise FM in Mati, Davao Oriental, was shot dead in plain view of a crowd, while hosting a barangay singing contest. Camangyan had been critical of illegal logging in Mati.

Most of the 100 murders since the start of the Arroyo administration remain unsolved, and it may be too much to hope that the two latest cases will be any different. The task of ending the impunity that was capped by the Maguin-danao massacre on Nov. 23 last year now falls on the shoulders of the incoming administration of Benigno Aquino III.