Outcry in Philippines over another journalist’s murder

September 6, 2012: Journalist groups called today for an investigation into the killing of a radio broadcaster, apparently the victim of a summary execution in Maguindanao province. The decomposing body of broadcaster Eddie Jesus Apostol was found on Sunday in marshland, five days after his family reported him missing.

Apostol, a part-time radio reporter with dxND radio in Maguindanao, had been shot twice to the head. His hands and feet were bound with rope. He was the sixth journalist to be killed in the country this year.

“We say time and again that for as long as these killings remain unabated by sending media killers behind bars, no journalist is safe,” said Marlon Purificacion, vice-president of the National Press Club of the Philippines (NPC). The NPC and other groups called on the government to investigate. “The government must stop paying lip service and treat the solution of these murders as among its top priorities. We demand no less,” Purificacion said.

New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) will investigate whether the killing was related to Apostol’s work, it said in a statement issued today. “Radio block-time reporters, who lease airtime from a radio station, are frequently targeted in provincial areas of the Philippines, CPJ research shows,” the group said.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also reacted to the most recent of the “continuing attacks” on journalists in the Philippines. The Philippines remains among the most dangerous countries in the world for media workers, said IFJ Asia-Pacific director Jacqueline Park. More than 160 journalists have been killed in the line of duty in the country since 1986.