Samuel Oliverio is the latest Philippines journalist to be killed, NUJP critical of government

Another journalist has been killed in the Philippines, one of the most dangerous places on the globe to be a journalist, and Malacañang is condemning the killing.

Image/NJUP Facebook page

In Mindanao, commentator on Radio Ukay and Supreme Radio in Digos City, Samuel Oliverio, 57, was shot dead by unknown gunmen while riding his motorcycle Friday morning. According to a Sky News report, Oliverio was driving his motorcycle with his wife riding pillion when he was attacked by two men on another motorcycle in Digos City. ‘I heard a loud bang and thought one of the motorcycle’s tyres had exploded. It was only after the second explosion that I realised Sammy had been shot,’ Rowena Oliverio said.

”We condemn the killing of radio broadcaster Sammy Oliverio in Digos City, Davao del Sur this morning, 23 May,” said Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. “The PNP (Philippine National Police) has been directed to exert maximum efforts to track the assailants and bring them before the bar of justice,” Coloma said.

We’ve heard this all before, says the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), who was harshly critical of the government responses of these murders. Rowena C. Paraan, NUJP Chairperson said yesterday in a statement:

On the very day we commemorate the 54th month since the single deadliest attack on the press the world has ever seen and the worst case of electoral violence in recent Philippine history – the November 23, 2009 Ampatuan massacre – broadcaster Samuel Oliverio, 54, was murdered in Digos City.

Oliverio, who had gone on leave from programs he anchored for Radyo Ukay and Supreme Radio after suffering a stroke in February, was on his way home from market with his wife when the all too familiar motorcycle-riding killers drove up and shot him in the head.

We can almost predict what comes next: police setting up another of those useless task forces that have so far failed to nail any of the masterminds in the 163 media murders before Oliverio’s, and the government vowing to bring his case to “justice” just as it has failed to do with all the other cases.

It would not be farfetched, either, to expect that, somewhere down the road, some government flunky, or even President Benigno Aquino III himself, will be repeating the immortal words he uttered during US President Barack Obama’s visit, that the victim was killed “not because of professional activities, but, shall we say, other issues.”

As if anything justified murder.

What we cannot predict will happen, however, is when a government that has time and again shown itself onion-skinned in the face of criticism will show the least bit of embarrassment and remorse for being insulted again and again by the extrajudicial murders that unmask its inability or unwillingness to protect its own citizens and make a mockery of all its claims to democracy, the rule of law and “inclusive development.”

The NUJP says 32 media workers had been murdered since President Benigno Aquino took office in 2010.  Oliverio was the third mediaman killed in Davao del Sur.