Violence against media remains high in Philippines Saturday, 26 November 2011 10:06

By BenCyrus G. Ellorin

SUBIC: Violence committed against members of the press remains high in the Philippines as a radio commentator in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro survived gunshots a day after the second anniversary of the world’s deadliest single attack on the media.

Police are now focusing on a drug syndicate as behind the recent attack on radio journalist Michael James Licuanan Thursday evening. Prior to the attack he was reporting on a recently exposed practice of drug traffickers to send contraband through regular freight forwarding services.

Licuanan is now being treated for a gunshot wound in his abdomen.

Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) made an arrest last week and confiscated 1.5 kilos worth about $350,000 of prohibited methamphetamine hydrochloride, popularly known in the streets as shabu. The illegal drug hidden inside a television set was shipped to Cagayan de Oro from Manila through popular freight forwarder LBC.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) has documented 146 media killings since the fall of Martial Law in 1986. Most of this killings happened during the controversial nine-year presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with 104 members of the press murdered. At least five media killings have been documented in the one-year old Benigno Simeon Aquino presidency.

“The shooting of Licuanan is a mockery of our call to end impunity especially since we just commemorated the International Day to End Impunity less than 24 hours before the shooting,” said lawyer Santiago Goking,  president of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club (COPC).

Last November 23, the Philippine media community remembered the second anniversary of the killing of at least 32 members of the press in the worst single attack on the press worldwide. A 33^rd member of the press in that attack remains missing.

The Nov. 23, 2009 massacre claimed a total 57 lives. Aside from the members of the press who were covering a political event, 24 people mostly coming from the Mangudadatu family and their supporters were killed.

The suspects of the grisly murders are members of a powerful political clan in Maguindanao province, also in southern Philippines, the Ampatuans. The Ampatuan patriarch Andal, Snr is now facing multiple murder charges with his two sons Andal, Jnr and Zaldy Ampatuan who was regional governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao at the time of the killings. A total of 93 persons have been arrested for the Nov. 23, 2009 massacre.

The elder Ampatuan is now facing another criminal charge now as co-accused in the election fraud case levelled against former president Arroyo who was arrested on Nov. 18 this year and now temporarily in hospital detention due a bone illness. (Peninsula Online)