House probe sought on gun attack vs Baguio reporter

Baguio City on map

BAGUIO CITY — The Bayan Muna Partylist group has asked Congress to launch an inquiry into the alleged attack on a local-based journalist who reported being shot at on his way home last week.

Bayan Muna Representatives Carlos Isagani Zarate, Eufemia Cullamat, and Ferdinand Gaite asked the House committee on human rights to look into the apparently failed assault on Daily Tribune correspondent Aldwin Quitasol, president of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club.

Quitasol, a correspondent for the Daily Tribune, said he was walking after 9 p.m. on March 1 because he missed the last jeepney home when he heard a gunshot ring out behind him, prompting him to drop flat on the pavement.

He then informed the police that he saw sparks fly from a metal-link fence nearby and saw two men on a motorcycle speed away.

Quitasol and his wife, Kimberlie, who is an Inquirer correspondent, joined a police team that examined the area after Mayor Benjamin Magalong ordered a probe.

Because no bullet was recovered by the police, Undersecretary and PTFoMS head Joel Sy Egco castigated the media for reportedly “jumping to conclusions that may cause undue alarm, panic, and conclusion.”

On Wednesday, Quitasol asserted that he heard backfire from a faulty exhaust pipe of a motorcycle negotiating a steep climb and that he knew the difference between gunfire and motorcycle backfire.

Since Quitasol had earlier declined an invitation to a January police dialogue under an anti-insurgency program targeting suspected communist rebel sympathizers among journalists and government employees, Bayan Muna sought a deeper probe through House Resolution No. 2510 filed on March 5.

‘Chilling effect’

“The attempted shooting of Quitasol constitutes an attack on press freedom and sends a chilling effect to members of the media,” the resolution stated.

In a statement on March 4, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) said the government should not downplay or disregard the “trauma” suffered by Quitasol.

The media group reacted to a social media post by Egco who said: “Evidence suggests that there was no shooting that occurred at the said time and place.”

“Lastly, if there was indeed, an attempt to ‘frighten,’ ‘warn’ or even ‘kill’ Mr. Quitasol, the alleged [gunman or gunmen] had all the opportunity at that time to perpetrate, execute and consummate the plan,” he said.

“[The] said motorcycle did not stop for the riders to ‘finish him off,’ so to speak,” Egco noted.

But he said the agency would give Quitasol the benefit of the doubt and continue to dig deeper into the matter to “ferret out the truth” and, “if it can be proven that the ‘slay try’ was true, identify the perpetrators and hold them to account.”

The NUJP chapter in Baguio and Benguet said the group was standing by Quitasol and would continue to call for a deeper investigation into the failed gun attack.

The organization stressed that the Quitasol couple “has been systematically Red-tagged by state forces, which have put undue stress and alarm on both working journalists.” Quitasol used to work for a labor organization, while his wife edits an alternative online news site.

“As the Baguio City Police Office, through city police director Col. Glenn Lonogan, is in the thick of investigations, premature statements made by the PTFoMS come to the fore. We urge the PTFoMS to take seriously the complaint filed by Quitasol as a threat to his life as well as his family and allow the police to finish their investigation,” the NUJP said.

RELATED STORIES

PH still among deadliest places for journalists

Pampanga-based journalist shot dead in Samar