A Philippine broadcaster was shot dead while driving in the capital, Manila, police said on Tuesday, in another episode in a series of journalist murders in the country that is one of the most dangerous in the world for media professionals. .
Government critic Percival Mabasa, 63, was killed in an ambush by two men on a motorcycle while driving to work on DWBL radio on Monday night (3), Colonel Jaime Santos, of the local police, told the television channel Teleradiyo news.
“He was dedicated to his work and maybe that was the reason for his murder.”
Known locally as Percy Lapid, Mabasa was a harsh critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte, as well as the policies and authorities of his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Júnior. He is the second journalist killed since Marcos took power on June 30 this year. Last month, another radio host, Rey Blanco, was stabbed to death in the central region of the country.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said Mabasa’s murder reflected that “journalism remains a dangerous profession in the country.”
At least 187 journalists have been murdered in the last 35 years in the Philippines, according to the international organization Reporters Without Borders. The Committee to Protect Journalists, in an October 2021 report, ranked the country seventh in its global impunity index, with 13 unsolved crimes.
Mabasa’s family called his murder a “deplorable crime” and demanded that “their cowardly murderers be brought to justice”.
Human rights group Karapatan described him as “one of the fiercest truth-tellers in the country”. The broadcaster’s YouTube channel has 216,000 subscribers.
A spokesman for the presidency’s office told reporters that Marcos is concerned about the murder and that authorities will follow up on the investigation. A government agency related to media security said it assumed the broadcaster’s death was related to his craft.
One of the most notorious cases of persecution of the press in the Philippines is that of Maria Ressa, co-founder of the journalism portal Rappler, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her fight for freedom of expression.
Rappler gained notoriety for publicizing allegations of human rights abuses, and Ressa was arrested by Duterte’s government in 2019. She was accused of violating controversial “cyber defamation” legislation over a report accusing a Filipino businessman of illegal.
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