Radio journalist shot to death outside his home in the Philippines | Philippines

11/11/2020 Philippines, World



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A radio journalist was shot dead in front of his home Tuesday morning by two armed men on a motorcycle, Philippine police said, four years after the provincial broadcaster survived a similar attempt to kill him.

Virgilio Maganes, 62, who lived northwest of Manila in Pangasinan province, was shot six times and died at the scene, the force said in a statement.

Maganes is the 18th journalist assassinated since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016, and 190 since Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in 1986, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP). Few of the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Maganes survived the previous attempt on his life by pretending to be dead.

“We demand that the authorities work quickly to resolve his death, which could be related to the failed attempt on his life on November 8, 2016, when armed men on a motorcycle shot him while riding a tricycle,” NUJP said in a statement.

On that occasion, the gunmen left a note at the site that read: “I am a drug dealer, do not imitate me.” Such messages were common in extrajudicial killings during the height of Duterte’s war on drugs that led to thousands of deaths.

Police said they had not established a motive for the Maganes attack. At least two other journalists have been killed for doing their job in 2020, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and both cases remain unsolved.

The Presidential Working Group on Media Security, which was created to address media killings, described the murder as “an act of cowardice” and promised to prosecute those responsible, while Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said that both the Maganes murder and the 2016 attack would be investigated to establish whether they were linked to his work as a journalist.

Media under pressure

The Philippines is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, and the media has come under increasing pressure since Duterte was elected president.

ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcaster, was ordered to shut down after the regulator failed to renew the channel’s 25-year operating license, while veteran journalist Maria Ressa and her online news site Rappler They face numerous court cases on charges ranging from tax evasion to defamation. Both ABS-CBN and Rappler have criticized Duterte’s drug war and his government’s policies.

The country’s largest newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which has also published stories critical of the war on drugs, was forcibly sold to Ramon Ang, an ally of the president, after Duterte threatened its owners with legal consequences. . The newspaper also reported on Duterte’s alleged hidden wealth in the run-up to the 2016 election.

The country’s largest broadcaster ABS-CBN was ordered to close earlier this year after its 25-year operating franchise was not renewed. [File: Rolex Dela Pena/EPA]
Renowned journalist Maria Ressa and her online news site Rappler face numerous court cases. [File: Alecs Ongcal]

The Duterte administration denies directing its reports to the media.

Index on Censorship, which campaigns for freedom of expression, condemned the murder of Maganes.

“Press freedom has taken a nosedive with Duterte leading a constant campaign of harassment,” the organization said on Twitter. “The world must unite in rage against these horrible attacks.”

Last month, New York-based CPJ ranked the Philippines seventh on its annual Global Impunity Index, a ranking that aims to highlight countries where journalists are murdered and their killers are still free.

The Philippines has been a mainstay of the index since it began in 2008, although its last position marks a slight improvement. CPJ says the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, which killed 58 people, 32 of them journalists and media workers, was the deadliest attack on the press the organization has ever recorded.



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