2012, a new year but little changed from years past in the murder of media workers in the Philippines.
The gunmen who attacked Christopher Guarin, publisher of the General Santos City-based Tatak News, last Jan. 6, made sure he was dead. They shot him at least five times in the body and once in the head, after they ambushed him as he was driving home with his wife and 9-year-old daughter, and when he tried to flee, caught up with him.
Guarin was the first journalist murdered in the Philippines this year, less than a week into the New Year.
He joins the long list of murdered Filipino journalists—150 since 1986, 10 of them under the Aquino administration—all of whom continue to cry out for justice. For in the 10 (out of the 150) cases that have seen convictions, only those who pulled the trigger were punished. No one who ever gave the order to kill a journalist has been convicted.
Guarin’s death is a stark reminder that impunity in the country remains very much alive, fostered by the glaring inaction, even apathy, of government, belying President Aquino’s avowals about his commitment to justice and respect for human rights in his quest for the “tuwid na daan.”
We demand that Mr. Aquino unequivocally order all concerned agencies not just to arrest and ensure the conviction of Guarin’s killers, including the masterminds, but also to end all extrajudicial killings and ensure justice to the victims. And to impose sanctions in case these agencies fail to do so.
Unless the President does this, the blood of Guarin and everyone else—past, present and future—
who have been denied justice will forever stain his hands.
—NESTOR P. BURGOS JR.,
chair, National Union
of Journalists
of the Philippines,
nujphil@gmail.com