ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines—Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) said he has directed the Tawi-Tawi police to investigate and solve Sunday’s killing of broadcaster Richard Najid instead of coming up with unnecessary statements.
“I have directed the local security force in the island-province of Tawi-Tawi to resolve the soonest possible time the killing of a known media personality in the province,” Hataman, who sounded irate, told the Inquirer by phone on Monday.
Najid, 35, acting manager of DXNN PowerMix FM in Bongao town, was gunned down as he was going home from a basketball game around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Babylyn Kano-Omar, a former colleague of Najid’s in another radio station, said “DJ Troy,” as he was known, died while being treated at a hospital.
The police said the identities and motive of the perpetrators remained unknown but Senior Supt. Joselito Salido, Tawi-Tawi police chief, said one thing was sure: Najid, 35, was “not a journalist.”
He was “just one disc jockey, a person that plays popular music on FM radio,” Salido said.
Hataman said he did not care if Salido was a DJ as the police had claimed.
“Whether he was a disc jockey, a production staff or a news gatherer of any media entity, he was still considered member of the Fourth Estate,” he said.
The Inquirer learned that Najid did not just play music at the station. He was anchorman of the station’s daily public affairs program.
He was the second radio broadcaster slain in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi, since 2007. In June of that year, Vicente Sumalpong of the government-run Radyo ng Bayan was killed.
Under the Aquino administration, Nadjid was the 27th journalist killed according to the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines.
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