THE National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) yesterday condemned the latest killing of a community-based journalist in Bongao, Tawi-tawi, just a day after the observance of World Press Freedom.
The NUJP chapter in Zamboanga, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi confirmed that journalist Richard Nadjid, 35, married and a father of five, was gunned down the night of May 4 near his home in Bongao.
The group said that while investigators say they have yet to establish the motive for the killing, they were disturbed because Tawi-Tawi provincial police director Senior Supt. Joselito Salido “has immediately and baselessly dismissed the possibility of Nadjid’s murder being workelated.”
Salido allegedly called the victim “just one disc jockey, a person that plays popular music on FM radio station. He is not a journalist.”
The NUJP chapter said that for the chief of a province’s police force to “display not only insensitivity but, more alarming, ignorance reflects on the quality of what is supposed to be the country’s main law enforcement agency and explains why media murders and human rights violations in general continue to be committed with impunity.”
The group said Nadjid was not only the station manager of DxNN Power Myx FM station in Bongao but also handled the station’s regular morning news and public affairs program.
NUJP called Salido’s pronouncements a cop-out, saying Nadjid’s murder was not surprising “given how his commander-in-chief, President Benigno Aquino III, himself set the tone by dismissing media killings with the blanket insinuation that these murders were prodded by motives other than the victims’ work.”
The group said Nadjid is the second member of the Tawi-Tawi media killed and the 27th during the Aquino administration, the worst year-on-year record under any administration.
On June 25, 2007, radio broadcaster Vicente Sumalpong, production supervisor of Radyo ng Bayan, was gunned down. As with all media killings in this country, the mastermind remains at large.
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