Barely three days after the media lauded a rare conviction in the killing of a journalist, a reporter was shot dead Thursday night at a public market in the central Philippines, the 10th journalist to be killed this year, Reuters reported. George Benaojan, 27, was talking to a colleague at the public market in Talisay City on the central island of Cebu when a lone gunman shot him in the neck and chest.
Benaojan, who worked with DYBB Bantay Radyo, died hours later at a nearby hospital, said Superintendent Vicente Loot, police chief for Cebu province. Benaojan's murder came three days after a Cebu city court sentenced a former police officer to life imprisonment for killing a newspaper editor on the southern island of Mindanao in May 2002.
"The killing may have something to do with his commentaries," Loot told Reuters. "We are trying to review his past commentaries to give us a clue to the possible suspects who wanted him dead." Benaojan had been getting death threats on his mobile phone and escaped an ambush last year when gunmen fired at his car outside his home.
"We have talked to many witnesses who saw the whole incident," he said. "We are making a cartographic sketch of the gunman who escaped with two accomplices in a waiting taxi near the market." Benaojan also wrote a column in the newspaper Bantay Balita.
The Philippines is the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist in terms of the number of killings, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Despite government promises to stop the murders, and cash rewards, the conviction was the first in 73 killings of journalists since democracy was restored in 1986 by a "people power" revolt that chased out dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Benaojan was also the 36th journalist to be killed since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took over in January 2001,
Most of the killings have been related to investigations of corruption, gambling, narcotics and other illegal activities.
