GENERAL SANTOS CITY, Philippines— Local journalists here have made small personal sacrifices to raise P200,000 in a bid to swiftly resolve the January 5 murder of newspaper editor Christopher Guarin.
The 41-year old Guarin, also publisher of the daily tabloid Tatak News, was gunned down as he was driving his family home.
The journalists, who belong to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas and other groups, have raised P61,750, as of Thursday morning.
One of the journalists who contributed to the fund said he did not mind delaying payment his electricity bill as long as he can participate in the drive, which was also their way of putting an end to media killings here.
Another journalist said he willingly parted with the P500 allowance his wife had given him for the week. “Never mind if I don’t have an allowance for the whole week. We must put a stop to this senseless killing of our media colleagues,” he said.
General Santos City has the most number of journalists killed since 1986 at 20. The number included the 14 media workers who perished in the infamous Maguindanao massacre, also known as the Ampatuan massacre after the name of the town where at least 57 civilians, mostly journalists, were mercilessly gunned down in November 2009.
“We want concrete results and we want conviction of the triggerman as well as the mastermind. Once this is done, they would be afraid to kill journalists in the future,” the journalists from the different groups said in a shared statement.
Media workers here also agreed that the investigation of the Guarin murder should be handled by the National Bureau of Investigation and the main office of the police’s Criminal Detection and Investigation Group.
A week has passed and the local police here remain clueless as to the motive and the brains behind the killing, they said.
Guarin was scheduled to be buried on Sunday and authorities have yet to find a suspect.
The government, the journalists said, could also do its share by putting up a bounty to hasten the resolution of the murder.
They noted that the government had raised a reward for information that will lead to the arrest of fugitive retired Major General Jovito Palparan, who is facing charges of kidnapping in connection with disappearance of two students of the University of the Philippine.
Why it can’t do the same for the Guarin case, they asked.
The journalists also called on the police to address the summary executions occurring in the city even if the victims were not media workers.