Text by BUENA BERNAL
Photos by ELAINE TIU
“AGRA, bumaba ka na sa posisyon mo (Agra, step down from office),” cried Erlyn Umpal, mother of the son of slain UNTV cameraman McGilbert Arriola.
Umpal, along with other protesters, marched down the streets of Morayta and Mendiola in Manila on Friday in protest of Justice Secretary Alberto Agra’s recent decision clearing two members of the Ampatuan clan of any wrongdoing in the Maguindanao massacre.
Umpal and Arriola were about to be wed December last year. But on the morning of Nov. 23, Arriola, along with 30 other journalists, were slaughtered in Maguindanao. Arriola’s son was born 14 days before the incident.
Another widow, Mary Jane Merisco urged the media to continue their fight for justice. “Sana huwag sumuko. Huwag, kasi alam namin na matagal (I hope you won’t give up. We know we’re in for a long fight).” Merisco is the wife of Rey Merisco of Periodico Ini.
Other aggrieved relatives, worried of a possible whitewash, also called for Agra’s disbarment.
In a statement, the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines condemned Agra’s decision and labeled it as an act of forgetting justice, law and democracy.
The protest march was also held in commemoration of the fifth month of the massacre, one of the country’s bloodiest election-related violence incidents since the restoration of democracy.