When the mob takes on the state

THE ECONOMIST of London, in its May 26th issue, said a mouthful. In an article datelined Sao Paulo (Brazil’s industrial city), the newsweekly points out:

"Rio de Janeiro is more beautiful, but residents of Sao Paulo boast that their city is safer. At least they did until May 12th when a wave of violence orchestrated from within the prison system struck Brazil’s biggest city and several neighboring towns. In five days of mayhem and retribution some 150 policemen were killed; 82 buses were torched and 17 bank branches attacked. Rebellions erupted at 74 of the 140 prisons in Sao Paulo state. Schools, shopping centers and offices shut down; transport froze. For several days, paulistanos could not even claim that their city was safer than Baghdad."

The murderous mayhem, as we reported several times in this corner, turned out to be a show of force by the leaders of the state’s main criminal gang, the Primeiro Comando da Capital.

Prisoners directed the violence by mobile phone from their prison cells.

This will impact, the British magazine pointed out, in next October’s presidential elections, which pits the incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva against challenger Geraldo Alckmin. How can Alckmin defend himself now against the accusation that he let things slide, when he was governor of Sao Paulo until last March?

In Rio, it was noted, three gangs battle each other and the police for control of the favelas (slums) and the drug trade.

Sao Paulo’s drug racket has been more fragmented, and the Primeiro Comando known better by its initials of PCC, an amorphous presence. The explosion of criminal attack over a week ago, which ended only after seven days of violence in which the huge city was virtually brought to a halt, shows that the mob could still take over the metropolis and the state.

Imagine ruling that vast "empire" of crime from jail! The PCC’s top dog, Marcola, who began his career at nine, as a pickpocket, has been behind bars since 1999. Yet in 2001, the Comando launched a multi-prison rebellion, in 2003, it assassinated an unpopular judge. And now this battle in the streets of Sao Paulo. Has the mob taken over the town?

There’s still talk a "deal" was made to restore calm. The orgy of violence is believed to have been triggered by a plan to transfer 765 of the PCC’s people in jail to a more remote prison, with their cellphones taken away from them. Perhaps this has been junked.

The police have retaliated, of course, by gunning down 93 "aggressors." So it’s become tit for tat.

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The way things are going, if we don’t wake up, the same thing could happen here. As The Economist put it, there’s something amiss in the way Brazil punishes criminals. The approach is at once unduly harsh, and absurdly lenient. Prisoners may be denied TV, but they can use cellphones to extort money and run their gangs "outside".

Moreover, Sao Paulo’s prison population has more than doubled since 1994. Prison construction, in contrast, has lagged – the prison system has 35 percent more inmates than places for them. Doesn’t this sound familiar? In time, the magazine noted, "hastily trained prison guards became prisoners’ accomplices. When Brazil’s IBCCRIM, a research institute, says that "prisons are becoming centers of criminality," one immediately quick-transfers this observation to our own.

A reform of our prison system is urgent. Kids must be sent to correction centers, not dumped in the midst of hardened criminals, pedophiles, and drug-pushers in our filthy, overcrowded jails – population with three times the number they were originally designed to contain.

Next, we must mean it when the Court decrees Capital Punishment – by really executing criminals convicted of heinous crime, not commuting their sentences. Decongest our penitentiaries! Our prisoners everywhere starve because there are too many mouths to feed.

As for armed gangs taking over the community, defying the state, that’s not far-off either. Already, there are murderous fights in which snatchers and their ilk, armed to the teeth, shoot down Barangay tanods and other village watchers in a scuffle over . . . would you believe, cellphones.

The mobile phones are supposed to benefit society but too many have instead become communications equipment for the mob, triggers for terrorist bombs, and objects to be stolen – often violently.

It's not the cellphone's fault. It's ours.

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Our STAR columnist, who’s also STARGATE President & CEO (People Asia magazine, etc.), Mr. Babe Romualdez, was packing his bags to fly to Hong Kong, then onwards to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he’s scheduled to address the International Press Institute’s May 27 World Congress Assembly, I rang him up.

"I’ve got another journalist gunned down to add to your tally!"

This was radio broadcaster and former Puerto Princesa City vice-mayor Fernando Batul. The victim had been driving to his radio station when two men on a motorcycle (a favorite modus operandi for murder) shot him four times. Was he killed because of politics, or because he was a journalist? In any event, the unfortunate former vice-mayor became the 42nd newsman or media person slain during President GMA’s incumbency.

Romualdez is bringing along to the World Congress – where 900 or more delegates are expected – yesterday’s STAR editorial, sanguinely titled: "NO END TO THE KILLINGS." Sanamagan. Talk about photo-finish.

"Hurry to the airport," I cautioned Babe, "lest another journalist bites the dust and your statistical count gets even more garbled!"

Really, this is no joking matter. Romualdez is going to deliver his panel talk on the subject of "Dying to Tell the Story." They needed a Filipino journalist to explain to the conference of editors, radio-television executives, publisher and media owners why the Philippines, heralded to have the freest press in Asia, has been tagged as the most dangerous in the region, and the "second most hazardous in the world."

Babe dug up the following facts: The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) says 10 journalists were murdered in 2005 alone. One of them, Romualdez noted, was Marlene Esperat of Mindanao who was even referred to as the "Erin Brokovich" of local print media.

I might as well reel off Romualdez’s body-count in the speech he’s bringing to the IPI General Assembly in Scotland, where they’ll put a kilt on him (under it, and the sporran, one Scotsman in his cups confessed to me once, is Marks & Spencer). Then he’ll have to do the Sword Dance to the bagpipe keening of "Scotland the Brave."

Anyway, here’s what Babe will unveil at the Panel on journalists being paid for their stories with death:

The NUJP lists 76 media people who have been killed since 1986, or 20 years since democracy was restored in the country. From 1986 to 1992, during the term of Mrs. Corazon Aquino as president, 23 were killed, only slightly lower than those who were killed during the Martial Law era under Ferdinand Marcos. If the Philippines is working under a democracy, and if the press is supposed to be the freest in Asia, why then are journalists being murdered? And why are there more journalists killed now that the country is under a democracy, compared to the time when the Philippines was under authoritarian rule?

The assassination of Palawan provincial broadcaster Fernando Batul mentioned earlier in this report marks the 42nd journalist killed under the current Arroyo administration.

Perhaps a look at the Philippine setting is warranted. Unlike in Europe where journalists work "full-time" as media men, either as reporters or broadcasters, the setup in the Philippines is quite different. In our country, it is possible to work as a lawyer and a media man at same time, where one’s law background can serve as a leverage for one to become a political analyst or opinion columnist.

One can also be a businessman and a media person at the same time, but one need not confine his reportage on the news beat alone. In fact, politicians can also be columnists, and a number of Congressmen are known to have columns in Manila-based tabloids.

Even a schoolteacher can work on the side as a broadcaster, like Edgar Amoro, who worked as a part-time commentator and reporter for a provincial radio station in Mindanao. In February last year, Amoro was killed, although it is suspected that his murder was most likely not in direct relation to his work as a radio commentator, but because he was a principal witness in the 2002 murder of Edgar Damalerio, another radio commentator and editor for a local paper in Mindanao.

As a matter of fact, one more media man was shot early this month, ironically on May 2, the eve of the celebration of World Press Freedom Day. Nicolas Cervantes was a hard-hitting columnist for a tabloid in Mindanao, and it was said that he went after suspected tax evaders. Hardly surprising considering that Cervantes worked undercover as the National Director of the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s Confidential Information group. It’s circumstances like this that also makes it rather difficult to pinpoint if the killing was in relation to journalistic work, or because of some other reason.

Despite contrary opinion from certain sectors, democracy is still at work in the Philippines in the sense that the media and the people still have freedom of expression.

For many of you here, it may be quite unthinkable that a school teacher can also work as a journalist, but in many places in the Philippines, those who bring news or information oftentimes are the more outspoken or daring. But it is such exercise of freedom, however, that may have just given these media practitioners the death sentence because most likely, they may have hit some raw nerves through their exposés or fiery commentaries.

For many of these killings, blame has been put on local politicians and drug lords. While Filipinos are acknowledged to be friendly and hospitable, there is also a fiery Latino temperament lurking inside. Filipinos can take things personally and passionately, and it’s been known that a person could get killed simply for staring. People who felt alluded to or who resented the reportage often retaliated by throwing libel suits at the offender or worse, by lodging a bullet gangland-style in the reporter’s head, which is one likely explanation for the murder of journalists in the Philippines.

Research conducted by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility or the CMFR revealed that most of the journalists killed were radio broadcasters in smaller networks located in the provinces, and many of them were block timers who bought airtime to express their views and opinions, or expose anomalies, corruption and irregularities in their respective communities. Of the 25 killed from 2000 to 2005 in CMFR’s tally, 21 were radio broadcasters, and 17 of them did not have accreditation from the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas, the self-regulatory body of Philippine broadcast media.

There have been complaints, too, about some media practitioners overstepping the boundaries of what is considered ethical and responsible journalism. One may even argue that compared to the time of Martial Law, more journalists have been murdered probably because there was more restraint from media men then because they knew they had to be careful with their reportage. While there are those who may have overstepped the line in pursuit of the profession, the killings should be condemned to the highest degree because no one has the right to put the law into his own hands.

What is particularly deplorable however is that since 1986, only two cases have successfully resulted in convictions: that of the 1991 killing of Nesino Toling, the publisher-editor of a local paper and Edgar Damalerio in 2002, whose case was closely watched by local and international media. Journalists know that threats and dangers go with the territory. Many know that they risk their lives as they attempt to bring out the facts and tell the story, and be the voice of those who could not freely speak. But to be deliberately targeted for execution is an altogether different story.

Perhaps it’s also worth mentioning that private companies like UK-based bridge builder Mabey and Johnson are helping families of the slain journalists cope by providing scholarships to the children in order to help them rebuild their future.

But clearly, there has to be stronger legislation to protect journalists better, and make it safer for those who are threatened because of their work. Freedom of speech must be safeguarded at all costs, because implicit in democracy is the assurance of free speech and ultimately, of a free press. Admittedly, there should also be responsible exercise of this freedom, and excesses must be avoided in order for the public to support and trust journalists as purveyors of truth.

What is crucial especially at this time, is to stop the emerging culture of violence against the media, whether in the Philippines or elsewhere. Criminals should not be allowed to get away with murder. The exercise of freedom of speech and of expression should not mean the death sentence for a journalist.

This is why the presence of international organizations such as the UN Commission on Human Rights and more importantly, the International Press Institute, should be strongly felt especially in democratic countries like the Philippines, whose government is very sensitive to any negative publicity or criticism from the international community. I know for a fact that powerful international networks like the CNN have the clout to influence even government policy, and this should be made to full use in light of the deadly threat against journalists.

Collectively, local and international news organizations can exert pressure to make authorities exhaust all effort to step the killings and make the murderers face the full consequence of the law.