BY SAMMY JULIAN
THE Philippines once again joined the list of countries where journalists’ murders are most likely to go unpunished.
According to the 2014 Impunity Index, despite last year’s conviction of a gunman who shot broadcast investigative journalist Gerardo Ortega in 2011, the continuing killing of journalists in the Philippines has pinned the country to its third place ranking behind Iraq and Somalia.
Issued on April 16 and published by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the updated Impunity Index noted 51 unsolved murders of journalists in the Philippines from 2004 to 2013, giving the country a rating of 0.527 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants.
The figure belies the claim made in November 2013 by the office of President Benigno Aquino III that “there is no more impunity” in the Philippines, the Index pointed out.
The country has held the third worst spot on the Index since 2010 after the November 23, 2009 Ampatuan massacre, in which 58 people, including 32 journalists and media workers, were killed in a single election-related incident in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao province.
In 2009, at least three journalists were gunned down, including freelance photographer Mario Sy who was shot in front of his wife and daughter following the publication of a series of photos on drug trafficking.
The most recent victim was tabloid reporter Robelita “Ruby” Garcia who was gunned down inside her home, in front of her family on April 6.
The Index ranks each country on the basis of the number of convictions of the killers of journalists relative to population. “Impunity” refers to the exemption from punishment of the killers of journalists.
For this year’s edition of the Impunity Index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of a country’s population, CPJ examined journalist murders in every nation in the world for the years 2004 through 2013. Cases are considered unsolved when no convictions have been obtained. Only those nations with five or more unsolved cases are included on the index. This year, 13 countries met the Index criteria, compared with 12 last year.
In February 2014, the Philippines dropped from 147th to 149th in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index released by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, RSF), with the country described as being in a “difficult situation.”
Another organization monitoring global press freedom, Freedom House, gave the Philippines a score of 43 in their 2013 Freedom of the Press Index, qualifying the press as only “partly free.”/PN
