THE director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is following up the Arroyo government on its investigations of the 2006 killings of six Filipino journalists.
In a letter received on March 25 by the Philippine permanent delegation to Unesco in Paris, Unesco assistant director general for communication and information Abdul Waheed Khan sought “the status of the legal investigations” of the murders of radio journalists Rolly Canete, Fernando Batul, Armando Pace and Ponciano Grande, and tabloid photojournalist Albert Orsolino.
Unesco director general Koïchiro Matsuura has been publicly condemning since 2006 the attacks against journalists as an “attack on our most fundamental freedoms,” Khan said in the letter to Ambassador Rora Tolentino, the country’s delegate to Unesco. (Download a copy of Unesco’s letter and related documents.)
The Unesco adopted in 1997 a resolution condemning violence against journalists. In 2008, the Intergovernmental Council of Unesco’s International Programme for the Development Communication urged member states to end impunity and prosecute the persons responsible for attacks against journalists.
“Impunity precludes the way of justice in more than 90 percent cases and if this trend prevails, journalists will remain easy targets. Needless to say, this represents a severe threat to the freedom of expression,” he said.
Unesco is the only United Nations specialized agency with a mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom and to foster the security of journalists, Khan said.
The Philippines remains in the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalist’s Global Impunity Index, a list of countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes.
Tolentino, in a message transmitting Khan’s request to Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo, said the number of journalists killed in the country has earned the Philippines “the unenviable reputation in UNESCO media circles of being the second most dangerous country in the world for journalists, after Iraq.”
“This is in spite of constitutional guarantees on the freedom of expression, of opinion and of the press, and the fact that Manila hosted World Press Freedom Day in 2002 with the Director General in attendance,” she said.
Romulo chairs chairs the Unesco National Commission of the Philippines or UNACOM.—Yvonne T. Chua