NDF condemns attacks against Filipino journalists

Rubi Del Mundo
Spokesperson
National Democratic Front-Southern Mindanao
August 22, 2004

The National Democratic Front-Southern Mindanao commiserates with the Philippine journalism community, whose members have been assassinated with impunity since the Marcos years, even more so under the U.S.-Arroyo regime. According to varying figures, the death toll since 1986 is between 44 and 79, a staggering and tragic death toll. Last year, the number of murdered journalists stood at seven. This year, six journalists have died, four of them murdered barely two months under a fresh but contested mandate of the Arroyo regime.

We condemn the brutal attacks against Filipino journalists. We condemn even more the U.S.-Arroyo regime's failure to successfully prosecute the killers, many of them members of the armed forces, the police and employed as goons by local warlords and politicians.

The regime's inability to arrest, prosecute and convict these killers reflects its larger failure in administering its faulty and anti-poor justice system. The series of journalist killings also reflects the breakdown of law and order that is characteristic of a corrupt and inept regime.

The killings are not surprising in a regime that has touted torture, extra-judicial killings, and summary executions as effective tools not only in fighting crime but also in their feeble attempt to decimate the progressive and revolutionary forces. In the countryside, the military and police have massacred and tortured lowly peasants, women and children, and the hors de combat. In cities like Davao, summary executions have become the norm, with businessmen and tourism officials even lauding these deaths for "improving" the image of the city as a tourism destination.

On a more fundamental level, the series of killings of journalists underscores the fallacy of the notion that, under this ruling system, democracy blossoms and that freedom of the press is flourishing. Nothing could be farther from the truth. These murders have unmasked the fa�ade of "liberal democracy" by a regime that is inherently intolerant of dissent and resistance. Beneath this fa�ade are human-rights abuses committed by the armed forces and the police and the endless assault on the Filipinos' freedoms, including the right to free speech and peaceful assembly.

Press freedom in the Philippines is an illusion. It cannot flourish in a system that promotes and survives on violence, where government officials would advice journalists to keep silent if they are under attack, which is precisely what the murderers want in the first place.

The reactionary AFP's attempt to militarize media institutions by deploying its intelligence agents and soldiers indicates a dangerous drift towards unabashed militarism and authoritarian rule. Any attack on the freedom and independence of the press is a curtailment of the people's basic right to information and constricts whatever little space is afforded the people to ventilate political ideas and legitimate issues through the capitalist-owned tri-media. The AFP seeks to obscure the true state of the nation and peddle only its prevarications to buttress a regime that is wanting of legitimacy.

While seeing that media is owned and controlled by big business and land monopolists to promote their class interests, the national-democratic revolution values the role of journalists in the people's struggle for a just society. Journalists are themselves victims of labor exploitation by the media industry moguls, aside from being harassed, sued for libel, or assassinated. As such, they are allies of the national democratic revolution in vanquishing this reactionary and brutal regime.

The NDF calls on journalists to militantly assert their rights and link their struggle with the national democratic people's movement that advances the people's war. Only the participation of journalists in the revolutionary struggle of the people will safeguard their rights and ensure the continued exercise of their profession that genuinely serves the Filipino people's interests, not the U.S.-Arroyo Regime's.

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