EDITORIAL - Another journalist murdered

Last Tuesday night, broadcast journalist Maria Vilma Rodriguez was sitting together with her mother, sister and nephew at a store near her house in Zamboanga City. A motorcycle pulled up and one of the bikers opened fire, hitting Rodriguez three times. Rodriguez managed to run across the road to her house and told her daughter about the attack, but she died later in a hospital.

Rodriguez, who worked for radio station e-Media in the city, is the fifth journalist to be murdered in the country since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. became President. Her death brings to 200 the number of journalists killed in the Philippines since democracy was restored in 1986. She is the second female journalist to be gunned down in Zamboanga City, after radio broadcaster Gloria Martin in 1992, and the fourth media worker killed in the city since 1986.

At least the suspect in Rodriguez’s killing – said to be her nephew and neighbor – was quickly arrested. Probers say the motive appears to be related to a family feud and not to the victim’s work as a journalist. Regardless of the motive, with the alleged gunman arrested, perhaps justice will move faster in her case. Relatives of broadcaster Percival Mabasa, known as Percy Lapid, are still waiting for law enforcers to catch the suspected mastermind, former Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag. The other principal suspect, his former deputy security officer Ricardo Zulueta, died of heart failure last March 15 in Bataan without ever being caught.

The weakness in catching and prosecuting the killers – both the brains and the triggermen – has kept the Philippines consistently on the list of the 10 worst countries in terms of impunity in journalist killings, and one of the most dangerous in the world for media workers.

The country holds the world record for the single worst attack on journalists – in November 2009 in Maguindanao, when 32 media workers were massacred together with 26 other people by members of the Ampatuan clan and their private army. The brains who directly participated in the mass murder, Andal Ampatuan Jr., is serving a life term without eligibility for parole together with his brother Zaldy. Three other relatives and dozens of other defendants are serving varying prison sentences. But of some 200 suspects in the massacre, around 80 remain at large. The guilty verdicts are crawling along through the appeals process.

The Maguindanao massacre is obviously a far more complex case than the fatal attack on Maria Vilma Rodriguez. Perhaps there is a better chance that she will get speedy justice.