The government should be held accountable for the death of a former journalist and all other victims of extrajudicial executions in the country, a media group said on Tuesday.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) said the state should be held accountable for the death of former Inquirer correspondent Melinda “Mei” Magsino in Batangas on Monday.
Magsino was killed by a single bullet shot at high noon on Monday as she was walking on a street in Barangay (village) Balagtas a few meters from her apartment in Batangas City.
READ: Ex-PDI reporter shot dead in Batangas
The NUJP urged authorities to arrest and prosecute not only the gunman who killed her but the mastermind who ordered the assassination as the group mourned the death of a former colleague.
“Mei’s murder not only highlights the fact that leaving journalism is no guarantee of safety from the perils of the profession—especially not from those with long memories and deadly intent—it also underscores the depths to which the culture of impunity has become entrenched in our country and society, courtesy of a government that has shown only the most cursory regard for human rights,” it said in a statement.
NUJP cited reports that “agents of the state have and continue to violate human rights with impunity, with government turning a blind eye or, in some cases, actually justifying, these depredations.”
If proven that the death of Magsino is media-related, NUJP said that she would be the second murdered journalist this 2015, the 26th under the administration of President Benigno Aquino III and the 166th since democracy was supposedly restored in 1986.
“For this, and for thousands of other reasons, the state is and should be held accountable for Mei’s death and those of all other victims of extrajudicial executions in the country,” NUJP said. RC
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