Martyrs of Press Freedom

I tried but still couldn’t find the right words to describe the
carnage in Maguindanao where scores of people, including friends from
the media, were mercilessly slaughtered. Such pure, unadulterated
evil. To say that I was outraged will be an understatement. The
perpetrators deserve the harshest penalty but death wouldn’t be
enough. Yet, we could do nothing to bring those people back to life.
The way that government, especially the uniformed services, did
nothing to prevent the massacre from taking place. The local
politicians and their minions who snatched the group composed of
members of a rival clan and journalists should now be the subject of
swift, relentless pursuit. Only by making them pay for their gruesome
crimes will authorities be able to win back the trust and confidence
of the public they have sworn to serve and protect. The abduction and
subsequent killing of our colleagues, all 27 of them, deserve the
strongest condemnation by everyone. They were there to cover a
legitimate democratic process which is the filing of a certificate of
candidacy by a politician bold enough to challenge the tyranny of the
Ampatuans. My sympathies also go to the families of innocent motorists
whose only mistake was to be at the wrong place at the awfully wrong
time. Without remorse, they were similarly killed and buried in
shallow graves, along with the martyrs of press freedom. No one could
fathom the depth of this evil. Plainly Satanic!
The Ampatuan massacre sent shivers down the spine of democracy itself.
The brutal act could no longer just be seen as an assault on press
freedom but a genocide aimed at wiping out democracy itself. The
Ampatuans now join the ranks of history’s darkest leaders such as
Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein et. al. Perhaps, by shooting the
messenger, the Ampatuans and their butchers have surpassed the records
of the world’s worst dictators.
The name Ampatuan is now synonymous to evil.
But who created them? The same people who are somehow offering them a
veil of protection. The same people who allowed the occurrence of this
carnage. Shame on them. Shame on the Ampatuans’ political patrons who
sold democracy to these demons in exchange for a seat in Malacanang
and for a 12-0 sweep in the most recent elections. Together, they
should go down in the annals of history as a blood thirsty alliance.
The 27 journalists who gave up their lives on that fateful Monday
morning may now be gone but their names shall reverberate forever in
the hearts and minds of other scribes and broadcasters who would
survive Philippine media’s holocaust.
Long live the 27 martyrs of press freedom! Long live all victims of
media killings!