Continuing violence

Since Day 1, President Aquino has portrayed his administration as the opposite of that of his predecessor. His “daang matuwid” brand of governance, he has intoned time and again, is aimed at bringing decency, integrity and the rule of law back into public office, after the widespread corruption and venality that marked the nine-year administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Mr. Aquino has framed the successive credit upgrades enjoyed by the Philippines under his watch as the positive result of an international community appreciating his efforts to curb the culture of government chicanery and criminal impunity spawned by the last administration. Arroyo is now detained on charges, and the chief justice she had imposed on the Supreme Court with a midnight appointment impeached. And at every turn, Mr. Aquino has advanced the notion that his governance is a vast improvement from the past dark days.

But here’s one area where the incumbent administration has unarguably bettered the preceding, though the “achievement” is clearly nothing to crow about. According to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, 23 journalists have been killed in the 40 months since Mr. Aquino took office in 2010, as compared to 12 in the first 40 months of the Arroyo administration, from January 2001 to May 2004.

Said the CMFR report: “Viewed from another lens, there are now more journalists killed per year on average under Aquino than there were under President Arroyo or any other Philippine president for that matter—at least if one does not count the monstrous Maguindanao Massacre where 32 journalists were among those killed in a single act of violence in 2009. Including those killed in that tragedy, Arroyo comes out on top, with 80 journalists killed under her watch…

“[I]f one were to exclude those killed in the Maguindanao Massacre, there were 48 media victims during the nine years under Arroyo, for a yearly average of 5.05 media murders. In comparison, the 23 media murders under Aquino make for an average of 6.9 cases a year.”

That is a hugely damning number—but it doesn’t end there. The CMFR report was issued in November 2013. Since then, the number of journalists killed under

Mr. Aquino’s watch has risen to 26. Only six cases so far have led to the arrest and prosecution of suspects. Furthermore, again excluding the Maguindanao Massacre, these numbers would now endow Mr. Aquino’s presidency with the dubious honor of having the highest average number of journalists killed per year since 1986, or counting all the four past administrations combined.

That bleak track record has led the international watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists to rank the Philippines in third place, after Iraq and Somalia, in its 2014 Global Impunity Index, which “spotlights countries where journalists are slain and the killers go free.” Countries, in other words, that pose the greatest dangers to those working in the press, where the high rates of media assassinations and the government’s failure to prosecute them combine to create an environment that emboldens more attacks against journalists, and imposes a chilling effect on the exercise of the freedom of the press as a whole.

“A climate of impunity engenders violence,” noted the CPJ. “In eight countries that appear repeatedly on the Index year after year, new murders took place in 2013.”

At his joint press conference with US President Barack Obama last week, Mr. Aquino was caught off-guard by a foreign journalist who asked about the high number of journalists killed under his watch. He fumbled the number of fatalities in the Maguindanao Massacre, mentioned that he had formed an interagency task force to look into extrajudicial killings and the like, and appeared to split hairs about whether those who’ve been killed under his administration were all journalists or were in the line of duty when they were targeted.

“But having said that, they were killed, that is against the law, the people will have to be found, prosecuted and sent to jail,” he added.

That was a dismal response, its promise of resolution sounding more tacked-on than anything else. Where is the sense of urgency or resolve in the President’s words? There is no suggestion there that he recognizes the gravity of the situation—both the extraordinary risks that Filipino journalists have to live through, and the severe damage this continuing violence has done to the Philippines’ standing in the world.

A sad point to ponder as we mark World Press Freedom Day today.