‘Arrest radioman’s killers’

President Arroyo vowed yesterday to punish those behind the killing of a Masbate broadcaster gunned down the other day after airing his regular political talk show.

"These attacks against members of the press shall not go unpunished and the Philippine National Police is already on top of the case," Mrs. Arroyo said, describing attacks against journalists as "heinous crimes of the worst kind" that stifle press freedom.

Mrs. Arroyo offered her sympathies to the family of Nelson Nadura, 42, who was ambushed in Masbate City.

Last month, Mrs. Arroyo offered a P1-million bounty for tips leading to the arrest of the killers of each murdered journalist in the Philippines in the past five years.

An average of three journalists are killed every year in the Philippines, and Nadura was the 43rd since democracy was restored in 1986.

Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders condemned Nadura’s killing and urged the Department of the Interior and Local Government to immediately bring his killers to justice.

The group said no motive for the killing has been established, but said Nadura’s colleagues believe the communist New People’s Army (NPA) may be linked to the attack.

Nadura headed the NPA in Masbate until he surrendered in 1998. He was a "blocktimer" (who bought airtime on hourly basis) of radio station dyME owned by the Espinosa clan.

Superintendent Romeo Mapalo, Masbate police director, said a task force has been formed, with members from the Army and different law enforcement agencies, to go after Nadura’s killers.

Mapalo said witnesses have surfaced, willing to provide probers a description of the two men who shot Nadura dead with caliber .45 pistols.

Meanwhile, former presidential adviser Jamby Abad Santos Madrigal, spokesman of the Kontra Pulitika Movement, urged the Palace and the PNP to take appropriate steps "to minimize, if not stop the slaying of media practitioners." — Marichu Villanueva, Cet Dematera and wire reports