Manila: Journalists To Protest Against Attacks

Journalists To Protest Against Mounting Attacks On Press Freedom

http://www.nujp.org

MANILA (NUJP/Pacific Media Watch): Filipino journalists are holding a nationwide protest tomorrow against escalating attacks on media professionals following the killings of two newsmen in the past week.

A photojournalist has also been shot dead.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), the Philippine Center for Photo-Journalism, the Press Photographers of the Philippines (PPP) and provincial media groups are also appealing for public support, warning that escalating attacks against the press usually precede or go hand in hand with attacks against civil liberties.

In Davao, journalists will join representatives of other Mindanao media organizations in a rally to protest the killing on November 12 of Mindanews photo editor Gene Boyd Lumawag in Jolo.

In Iloilo and Kalibo in Panay island, the NUJP and allied groups will also mobilize to condemn the murder of Herson "Bombo Boy" Hinolan, station manager and a anchor of dyIN Bombo Radyo.

Hinolan suffered seven gunshot wounds in an streetside fair attack last Saturday (November 13). He managed to regain consciousness but succumbed Monday night (November 15) to complications from his wounds.

Summit Publications has denied that Michael Llorin, a photojournalist shot dead in Quezon City, also on Saturday night, was a member of its staff or a contributor. The NUJP is still trying
to probe what prompted the attack against Llorin.

The deaths of Lumawag and Hinolan bring to 10 the number of Filipino journalists slain this year, the worst record for the country.

International media watchdogs say the Philippines is second to Iraq, a war-torn country, in having the most number of journalists murdered.

By the NUJP count, 59 journalists have been murdered since 1986, when a popular revolt ousted two decades of dictatorship and purportedly ushered in a new era of democracy.

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