EDITORIAL - Again, impunity

In the first week of the year, with the Christmas season not even officially over, another journalist has been murdered. Christopher Guarin, publisher of a community newspaper and a “block-timer” on radio station dxMD in General Santos City, was ambushed while driving home with his wife and nine-year-old daughter late Thursday night. Two men on a motorcycle opened fire and continued shooting as Guarin got out of his car and tried to run. He died of five gunshot wounds.

Police are still trying to determine if the murder was related to Guarin’s work in mass media. He is the first journalist to be killed this year and the 10th since President Aquino assumed power. More attacks are likely to follow unless perpetrators are brought to justice. Scores of journalists have been murdered in the Philippines since the restoration of democracy in 1986, making the country one of the most dangerous in the world for media workers. The poor record in solving the murders has made the country rank third, after Iraq and Somalia, on a so-called Impunity Index drawn up by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Nov. 23 last year, media groups around the world marked for the first time the International Day to End Impunity. The day coincided with the second anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre wherein 32 of the victims were media workers. The enormity of the massacre compelled authorities to go after the principal suspects – members of the Ampatuan clan – even if at the time they were close allies of the administration and had a political stranglehold on the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Today the clan members are still detained without bail, although scores of others who participated in the massacre remain at large and may never be brought to justice.

Seeing others getting away with murder has encouraged more attacks on journalists. If the killing of Guarin was not work-related, the only way to find out is to catch his murderers, establish the motive and solve the crime. Every murder that is unsolved fuels impunity and guarantees more attacks.