The killing of journalists in the Philippines

Ronald Meinardus, Manila

Many Filipinos are proud of the freedom the press enjoys in their country. And, indeed, the Philippine press may well be termed one of the freest in East Asia. But a series of killings of journalists has tarnished the rosy picture. With 13 Filipino journalists killed last year and four media workers murdered so far in 2005, the Philippines -- according to the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) -- has become the second most deadly place for journalists in the world after war- torn Iraq.

Confronted with what they perceive as a wave of targeted killings, Philippine journalists are infuriated. Publishing obituaries and fuming commentaries has become a sad routine for newspaper editors and TV producers after every new killing of a colleague. The angry commentaries sound like cries of desperation for they have little practical impact.

While the mere fact that journalists are put to death violently -- often in broad daylight -- is an outrage, the scandal does not stop there. Equally shocking is the fact that none of the murders have been solved in the sense that the perpetrators have been convicted and shut behind bars. "So much talk, but very little actions as evidenced by nobody being arrested," say Jose Pavia, publisher of the local newspaper Mabuhay. "Government must do much more, talk less and produce results."

While one could argue that the killings of journalists is basically a domestic affair of the Philippines (to my knowledge, no foreign correspondent has been victimized recently), the carnage has attracted considerable international attention.

Recently, a delegation of the Paris-based group Reporters Sans Frontiers (Reporters Without Borders, or RSF) visited the Philippines to assess the situation and expressed alarm that no arrests had been made. A similar investigation by the International Federation of Journalists in January came to the conclusion that "a widespread culture of violence that is tolerated and condoned by the government and officials" is behind the deaths. The government in Manila has denied these claims and in a demonstration of disapproval avoided official contact with the visiting journalists' groups.

Philippine journalists have repeatedly accused the government of a lack of political determination to bring the killers to justice. "Many of the suspects are people in power, local officials, drug lords with connections to local officials," says Carlos Conde, a well-known Filipino journalist and Secretary General of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), and adds: "Many of the killers have been identified as police officers or have links with the police or the military. So it is not surprising that the government would instinctively deny these things because if they didn't probably they would be dealing with a lot more problems than they have now."

Similar allegations are regularly brought up in the Philippine media. In a recent column entitled "Violence and Impunity," Michael Tan deals with what he terms "the high mortality rate of mass media practitioners in the Philippines" and offers a sociological explanation for the killings: "In our feudal society, the rich and famous see no bounds to their privileges, and this can include the right to exterminate people they don't like. Journalists aren't killed; they are executed. The politicians think they're in the right, and so do the police and the judges."

In many cases, the killed journalists were well-known whistle- blowers whose public exposis of graft, corruption and other wrong doings embarrassed powerful people. Typically, the journalists' killings occur in rural areas. Here, the communities are tightly knit societies and public affairs and politics have a personal, yes emotional, dimension. In this setting, political animosities are frequently settled violently.

This "culture of violence" (the Philippines has one of the highest homicide and murder rates in the world) is often attributed to social and economic factors. While mass poverty and socio-economic depression may explain why in this South East Asian nation "life is cheap" and professional killers can be commissioned for a few dollars only, political and institutional inefficiencies are also responsible for the dire straits of law and order. "Philippine democracy exists in an atmosphere of institutionalized crisis," writes Steven Rogers.

In recent months, the killings of journalists have spread to members of other groups with a political impact. The Philippine Commission on Human Rights has expressed alarm over what it terms the "seemingly systematic" assault on left-leaning activists. Since the beginning of the year, at least 20 members of leftist groups have been gunned down in different parts of the country by armed men with alleged links with the military. The fact that in these cases too the perpetrators have not been brought to justice is particularly unsettling.

Meanwhile many Filipinos are worried about the impact the killings of journalists have on their media. Occasionally these killings are described as an indirect form of censorship. When journalists fear for their lives, one cannot say the press is truly free. Says Philippine journalist Jose Pavia: "There is this reality that silencing the journalists is a way of silencing democracy."

The writer is the Resident Representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in the Philippines and a commentator on Asian affairs. Send comments to liberal@fnf.org.ph.