9-2-103-(3/5)-0

Who says numbers can't tell a story? This is the story of a President, who, in 9 years of governing the Philippines, managed to rank the country the second deadliest place for journalists by turning a blind eye on 103 killed journalists—some at a ratio of 3 dead media workers in 5 days—showing zero commitment to bringing suspects to trial, and justice to the victims and their families.

This culture of impunity has secured the Philippines a third rank in the Impunity Index established and monitored by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Impunity Index is “a list of countries that consistently fail to address journalist killings”.

At the same time, this President made sure the Philippines are mentioned in one breath along with Iraq and Somalia, the two countries leading the index. At least neither Somalia nor Iraq claim to be a democracy.

I have to admit, the computation of CPJ’s impunity index is somewhat confusing. It reflects the number of unsolved journalist killings as a percentage of the respective country’s population. All this number crunching and ranking leads to one conclusion: journalists are murdered and their killers get away with it.

The most unbelievable act of ‘trying to get away with murder’ was, without doubt, the Maguindanao massacre in November 2009. With 30 journalists and 2 media workers killed, this incident clearly catapulted the Philippines into or near pole position of any index measuring violence against journalists.

But, what about the other 25 people who lost their lives along with the 32 journalists that day? I get the feeling, the Maguindanao incident has become the showcase to illustrate violence against journalists in the Philippines. In my opinion, this is misleading as these killings did not explicitly target journalists. With a death toll of 57 people (almost everybody in this convoy!) the killers clearly did not distinguish between profession, gender or age before pulling the trigger. This, to me, shows the root problem in this country: impunity per se!

Journalists or non-Journalists, did the masterminds really believe they could get away with broad daylight slaughter? Apparently, yes. And, looking at the trial progressing, we don’t seem to be anywhere near a proper prosecution.