AUCKLAND (Pacific Journalism Review/Pacific Media Watch): A top Filipino investigative journalist will be speaking about the worst attack on journalists in history and her country’s culture of impunity in a keynote address at a conference at AUT University next week.
Ces Oreña-Drilon, an anchor for the ABS-CBN flagship current affairs programme Bandila, has been investigating the 2009 Maguindanao massacre when 32 journalists were among the 58 people killed by militia.
She has been reporting on the controversial legal and political contest around the massacre with nobody yet having been successfully prosecuted out of almost 200 people charged over the murders.
Drilon will give a keynote address at the “Political reporting in the Asia-Pacific” conference hosted by the Pacific Media Centre on November 27-29. The conference marks 20 years of publication of Pacific Journalism Review.
In a report last month, she revealed that the court handling the Maguindanao massacre case had allowed 17 policemen accused in the brutal killings to be freed on bail.
Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes allowed the policemen to post bail.
The court said the evidence of guilt against the 17 policemen, members of the 1508th Provincial Mobile Group, was "not strong".
Flagged down
The police were alleged to have set up a checkpoint in Sitio Malating in Ampatuan town where the victims were flagged down.
The victims, including the 32 journalists, were accompanying relatives of then Maguindanao politician Toto Mangudadatu in his filing of certificate of candidacy in Philippines elections.
The court prescribed a bail of P200,000 (NZ$5800) for each of the 58 counts of murder.
There are 58 counts of murder in the Maguindanao massacre case. This means that each policeman needed to post a bail of P11.6 million (NZ$336,000) in order to gain temporary freedom.
The Maguindanao massacre has been described as the single worst attack against journalists in history, and the worst case of election-related violence in the Philippines.
According to the Centre for Media Freedom and Responsibility, the trial of those accused of masterminding and carrying out the massacre started on January 2010, with 197 people initially named as accused.
Drilon has faced death threats and has a high-profile track record as a journalist, having being captured by Abu Sayyaf rebels and taken hostage in Mindanao in 2008. Her documentary about the ordeal was called Kidnap.
She is being brought to New Zealand by the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
Also, featured at the conference are papers on the Philippines media situation, including a presentation by Dr Amy Forbes from James Cook University about courageous women editors under the Marcos Martial Law period, and Professor David Robie and Del Abcede will talk about the contemporary “e-martial law” issue and hopes for a media Magna Carta.
Speakers, journalists and researchers from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Philippines, Timor-Leste, West Papua and other Pacific countries will be participating in the conference.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Journalism Review
