Media people light candles at Capitol for fallen colleagues

A GOVERNMENT official, a head of a newspapers association and at least 30 other members of the media lighted candles yesterday at the Cebu Provincial Capitol grounds to commemorate the fallen journalists, which is part of Cebu’s 22nd Press Freedom Week celebration.

Presidential Secretary Martin Andanar and Philippine Press Institute Executive Director Ariel Cervantes joined the media members during yesterday’s candle lighting ceremony.

Cervantes said that even if seven years had passed since the Ampatuan Massacre, where at least 34 people were killed, who were mostly media practitioners, the country and even the world would never forget that scene.

“That’s why meron kaming means (we always find means) every month — every 23rd of the month, we usually commemorate the Ampatuan massacre. We are calling for ‘an end to impunity,’ and we are calling for ‘a stop media killings’ campaign,” said Cervantes.

The PPI, which is a non-profit newspapers association, supports the press freedom celebration which highlights the solidarity of the journalists not only in Cebu but all over the country, Cervantes said.

With this, he said media are urgently calling the government to put the mechanism and measures to create a healthy environment for journalists.

“Importante yung gumagalaw tayo sa isang environment, nakagalaw tayo ng tama at yung trabaho natin ( It is important that we can move in a free environment and do our work, which) is really to move freely because there is a democracy in press freedom,” he said.

Andanar, for his part, said that the current administration initiated an administrative order on the creation of a task force against media killings.

He said that the task force would be composed of the different offices like the Executive Secretary, Department of Justice,media organizations like Kapisanan ng mga Broadkaster ng Pilipinas.

“Kaning task force para ni makatabang ta sa problema sa atong nasud sa (This task force would help in our country’s problem of) media killings,” he said.

“Kaning task force naka concentrate ni sa media. Sa una adunay task force sa extrajudicial killings but broad kaayo siya karon kaning task force concetrate g’yud sa media (This task force would concentrate on the media. At first, there was a task force on extrajudicial killings, but this was broad coverage. So, this task force created would concentrate on the media killings),” Andanar said.