Philippines Ranks Third in World’s List of Unsolved Media Killings

Manila, Philippines – According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Philippines, for the fifth consecutive year, ranked third in the list of nations which have the most number of unresolved media killings.

On the annual Impunity Index released on Wednesday by the CPJ, it stated that the Philippines still had 51 cases of journalists killed without a single criminal convicted from 2004 up to 2013.

According to the CPJ’s 2014 Impunity Index, the Philippines, with an estimated population of 96.7 million, has a rating of 0.527. Last year, the Philippines had a 0.580 rating.

The recent rating prompted the CPJ to consider it as a “welcome development” from last year’s conviction of the hit man who killed the broadcast investigate journalist Gerardo Ortega in 2011. On the other hand, the report said that the conviction “did little to change the rampant impunity in the Philippines.”

This disapproves the claim made by the office of the President Benigno Aquino III that ‘there is no more impunity’ in the Philippines,” alongside with the high count of unresolved media killings in the country over the past decade.

The country’s worst case of media killing in 2009, as the CPJ noted, 58 people, 32 of which were journalists and media workers, were massacred in Ampatuan, Maguindanao. Another was last year’s killing of freelance photographer Mario Sy when he is shot in front of his family after his publication of a series of photos on drug trafficking.

 

Iraq and Somalia

Iraq and Somalia, on the other hand, placed 1st and 2nd on the list respectively. The CPJ reported that Iraq had a total of 100 unsolved media killings in the past ten year, giving it an impunity rating of 3.067 and making it haplessly into the list seventh time.

Somalia, being second on the list, was rated 2.549 by the CPJ. Though it has only 26 unresolved cases of media killings, the country’s estimated population of 10.2 million made the imminent prospect.

The CPJ’s list comprised an aggregate of 13 nations where no less than five journalist murders have gone baffling since 2004.

The CPJ delineates murder as a “deliberate attack against a specific journalist in relation to the victim’s work.”

The other countries on the list are:

• Sri Lanka
• Syria
• Afghanistan
• Mexico
• Colombia
• Pakistan
• Russia
• Brazil
• Nigeria
• India

 

Reference/s:

1. ABS-CBNnews.com. PH still 3rd on list of unsolved media killings. (2014, April 16). Retrieved from http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/04/16/14/ph-still-3rd-list-unsolved-media-killings.
2. Waga B. Philippines Ranks Number Three In World’s List Of Unsolved Media Killings. (2014, April 17). Retrieved from http://kickerdaily.com/philippines-ranks-number-three-in-worlds-list-of-unsolved-media-killings/.