IFJ, local media groups alarmed by Zaldy Ampatuan's attempt to get off the hook
MANILA, Philippines - (UPDATE) The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and local media groups expressed alarm over the attempt of suspended Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan to remove himself from the list of suspects facing trial for the November 23, 2009 massacre of 58 people, including 32 journalists and media workers, in Maguindanao province's Ampatuan town.
The IFJ Asia-Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said that a "crucial moment" would soon occur when the Philippine Court of Appeals decides on a petition for certiorari or judicial review filed by Zaldy on a decision of former justice secretary Alberto Agra denying his bid to be dropped from the list of accused.
Agra had originally granted Zaldy’s petition but, following protests, including from state prosecutors handling the case, he reversed himself.
"If it (Zaldy’s petition) is successful, he will be freed from jail and avoid facing trial," Park said in a statement on Wednesday.
In Manila, media groups called for “transparency and vigilance” in the court process and joined relatives of the media workers slain in the massacre in a march to the CA Wednesday afternoon to show their outrage over the possibility that one of the leading suspects in the gruesome killings may go scot-free.
The IFJ extended its "solidarity and support" to the protest.
In their statement, the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, November 23 Movement, Philippine Center for Photojournalism and Center for Community Journalism and Development noted that “some of the families of the slain journalists have filed a petition for two CA justices—Danton Bueser and Marlene Gonzales—to inhibit themselves from hearing the Zaldy Ampatuan petition because of doubts over their impartiality.”
They said the media victims’ families noted in their petition that both justices “had inhibited themselves from hearing the petition of Ampatuan patriarch Andal Sr. They should have disclosed their reasons for doing so as mandated by the new code of judicial conduct, but did not. Why should they then be part of a panel that will decide the Zaldy Ampatuan petition which is intimately related to the first petition?”
While stressing that they were “not prejudging the guilt or innocence of Mr. Ampatuan” and assumed that “the justices of the Court of Appeals will base their decision on the strength and credibility of the evidence Mr. Ampatuan has submitted,” the media groups also said “it is imperative that the process be perceived as credible and beyond question.”
They cautioned that “should the perpetrators of the massacre, whoever they are, literally get away with murder, it will send the strongest message yet that neither the murder of journalists in such numbers, or that of politicians’ families and their partisans, can move the justice system to begin to dismantle the culture of impunity, or exemption from punishment, that has taken deep roots in Philippine society.”
“It will also encourage further killings,” they added. “It is crucial not only to the media, but … even more importantly, to Philippine democracy, that the Ampatuan Massacre trial deliver to the kin of the slain the justice that has eluded so many in this country.”
The Philippines ranks among the worst countries in the world in terms of journalists’ safety, with 142 media workers killed since the end of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986.
In 2010, the IFJ delivered an action plan to President Benigno Aquino III calling upon his government to bring an end to the culture of impunity that plagued the country during the presidency of his predecessor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
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