EDITORIAL - Two murders in a week

Upholding the country’s notoriety, gunmen murdered a radio broadcaster in Tandag, Surigao del Sur last Friday. Michael Diaz Milo, who hosted a daily radio show and worked as program director of dxFM radio, was gunned down by men on a motorcycle just a week after the murder of radio commentator Joas Dignos also in Mindanao.

Milo and Dignos are mourned as the nation joins the international community in marking the 20th anniversary today of World Human Rights Day. In those 20 years, the country has seen numerous cases of kidnappings and enforced disappearances, torture and executions attributed to state forces, most of them unsolved.

Colleagues said Milo, 34, had received death threats prior to his killing. He was driving a motorcycle in the city when the gunmen pulled up and shot him in the head. The murder reinforces the nation’s standing as the third worst in the world in the “impunity index” drawn up by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The index rates countries according to the ability to protect journalists from violence, including the capability to bring assailants to justice.

No suspect had been arrested for the murder of Dignos when Milo was killed.  This failure is undoubtedly one of the biggest reasons for the impunity by which media workers are permanently silenced in this country. Before Dignos was killed, journalists’ groups had counted 72 media workers murdered in this country since 1992.

The 2009 massacre of 58 people, 32 of them media workers, in Maguindanao has added to the impunity, with over 100 suspects still at large, key witnesses assassinated, and legal experts warning that litigation could take up to 200 years.

It has been said often enough that as in other crimes, failure to catch the killers of media workers encourages impunity. Whether or not the killings are work-related, perpetrators must be caught and brought to justice.