Filipino journalists fear for their lives

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 45

Filipino journalists fear for their lives

By

RAJENDRA BAJPAI,

of Reuters,

through NZPA Davao Joe Velasco opened a bottle of beer in a bar favoured by journalists and said, “Well, it was a quiet day.”

Just then his walkie-talkie came to life and a voice said, “Calling Roger. Encounter near DXMF office.” Velasco was back in business. He ordered some of his reporters to go to the site of the incident, one of many here on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao where guerrillas of the Communist New People’s Army have launched a fresh offensive against Government forces. A year ago Velasco's life was easier. His radio station DXMF broadcast music 15 hours a day. But in August DXMF installed a more powerful transmitter and switched to public affairs. The ' change exposed Velasco and his 13 reporters to the dangers of practising journalism in Mindanao. Six journalists have been killed on the island over the last year and nobody knows by whom. With the increase in fighting between the guerrillas and the armed forces, DXMF has started its own “body count” and occasionally its reporters have ferried bullet-riddled people to hospital and sometimes even buried unclaimed bodies. DXMF says 241 people were killed in Davao in the first three months of this year. The official statistics are not much better. They say 379 people were killed in the first 11 months of 1984. Of the 17 private radio stations in Davao, a city of 800,000, DXMF is now the second most popular. But there are people — Velasco says he doesn’t know who they are — who would like to see the radio station shut up and shut down. At least twice this year he was very nearly ambushed. “I don’t know who they were but I am more careful now,” he said. Reporters of another radio station were fired upon this month. “We receive a lot of threats by telephone,” Velasco said. “We don’t know who these people are but we are not taking any chances.” In Manila, Antonio Maria Nieva, president of the National Press Club of the Philippines, is campaigning to bring the killers to justice but has met with no success so far. Nobody has been arrested

in connection with the murders of the six journalists on Mindanao over the past year. Their deaths prompted Philippine daily newspapers to publish a pooled editorial last month. “It is only reasonable for journalists to expect the same protection that should be given to any ordinary citizen,” it said. Until last year, journalists were rarely killed. “We are trying to find out why it is happening,” said Nieva. “The year 1984 was a record. We don’t know if it was a coincidence or if there is a pattern or some kind of policy,” he told

Reuters. He said there were indications of the military’s involvement in some of the killings but there was no concrete proof. “As of now we are in the dark,” he said. In Davao, many journalists fear the military, not the guerrillas. “I can feel the danger in my bones,” said one reporter for a local newspaper. “I take precautions and am more suspicious when walking down streets and I avoid beer houses with only one exit,” he added. “I am more scared of the military in the provinces than the NPA,” said Nieva.