Weekly newspaper’s office in Laguna ransacked

SAN PEDRO CITY, Philippines—The office of a weekly newspaper based in this city was ransacked by still unidentified men early on Saturday.

Ray Junia, the owner of the newspaper called “Opinyon,” said the break-in was discovered by his caretaker around 2 a.m., just a couple of hours after they put the paper to bed before midnight on Friday.

He said the burglars gained entry into the office, located on the first floor of a three-story commercial building in Barangay San Vicente here, through an opening in the wall where an air-conditioner used to be. Among the things stolen, he said, were a small amount of cash, documents, and two laptop computers.

The police were still investigating the burglary, he said.

“I don’t really mind the things stolen but what I want established here is the motive. If this goes beyond a simple robbery, it’s alarming,” he said in a phone interview at noon Saturday.

Junia described the newspaper as an “advocacy paper” that tackled controversies involving the government and the private business sector.

He said the paper has a national circulation and has been going for four years now.

He said it was the first time someone broke into the newspaper’s office  but he wondered if it had anything to do with a prior incident involving his son, Ray Michael Junia, who ran as an independent candidate for vice mayor of San Pedro in the last elections but lost.

Last month, someone smashed the car windows of the younger Junia while it was parked in front of Opinyon’s office. The vandals took only the vehicle’s registration papers, the older Junia said.