A tabloid reporter in the Philippines has been murdered in her own home. Two assailants fired multiple shots at Rubylita Garcia, 52, after entering her home in Bacoor City in the province of Cavite on April 6, according to news reports. The suspects fled the scene on a motorcycle. The journalist's family members rushed her to a nearby hospital, where she died, the reports said.
Garcia was a reporter for the tabloid newspaper Remate and host of a local blocktime radio talk show at dwAD radio station. She was a member of the National Press Club and had served as president of the Confederation of Active Media Practitioners Organization, a group of local journalists in the region, reports said. Local journalists in the province suggested the murder could be work-related. Garcia was known as a hard-hitting journalist who had exposed wrongdoing in the Cavite police force, reports said.
News reports said that while Garcia was still conscious, she identified a high-ranking local police officer as being behind the attack. Remate's publisher, Benny Antiporda, said that she and the police official had had a heated verbal altercation recently. It is not clear what the altercation was about.
"Garcia's murder reaffirms the Philippines' reputation as one of the deadliest places in the world to be a journalist," said Bob Dietz, CPJ's (Committee to Protect Journalists ) Asia programme coordinator. "Until the perpetrators of Garcia's murder and those of other journalists in the country are brought to justice, the deadly cycle of impunity will inevitably continue."
“We offer our sincere condolences to Rubylita Garcia’s family and we urge the police to identify those responsible for her murder so that they can be brought to trial,†said Benjamin Ismaïl, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Asia-Pacific desk.
“The authorities must urgently adopt concrete measures to immediately end impunity for this kind of violence or else they will have to shoulder much of the blame for the next attacks on journalist. Each murder of a journalist becomes the government’s responsibility because of its failure to react.â€
Radio hosts who lease airtime on local stations, called block-timers, are frequently targeted in provincial areas of the Philippines. The country is ranked as the second deadliest place for journalists, according to CPJ research. Seventy-four journalists have been murdered in the Philippines since CPJ began keeping records in 1992, data shows.
