EDITORIAL - ‘Deep-seated impunity’

Since November 2009, there has been no other murder on the same scale as the massacre of 58 people, 32 of them media workers in Maguindanao. But killings of journalists continued, with nine murdered in 2015, three of them within just 10 days in August.

That record made the Philippines the second most dangerous country after Iraq for media workers, according to the International Federation of Journalists. The IFJ is releasing its 79-page report on the problem in a few days and submitting it to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is meeting on the issue in Paris.

The IFJ report comes on the heels of the release last week of the annual global report of Human Rights Watch, which criticized the record of the Aquino administration in protecting civil liberties. Now in its 26th edition, the HRW report observed that “there has been little accountability” for the killings of activists, journalists and lumad or indigenous leaders as well as other serious rights abuses including child exploitation, displacement of communities and contract killings in the Philippines.

The 659-page World Report 2016 raised a recurring observation of international journalist groups – that the failure to prosecute those behind the killings has bred impunity. HRW acknowledged that killings have gone down under the Aquino administration, but added that the next one must work on institutional reforms that will tackle “deep-seated impunity for abuses by state security forces and the corrupt and politicized criminal justice system.”

Tackling those problems will take strong political will. In many cases, local political kingpins allied with those in power are suspected of involvement in the killings, but no one is caught because the kingpins control every step of the criminal justice system in their turf, from barangay personnel to police, fiscals and judges.

Political will is crucial, but no president can do it alone. Institutional reforms require the strengthening of the judiciary and development of professionalism in the police and military, whose members must not feel beholden to politicians for promotions and assignments. The reforms are daunting, but they are indispensable in a free society where citizens do not live in fear of those tasked to protect them.