Witnesses too, not just the journalists

From Reporters Without Borders comes this September 25 alert on the capture of Edgar Amoro's alleged killer. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) does not include him in its list of "journalist/media practitioners killed in the line of duty" because CMFR believes that Amoro got killed primarily because he was a key witness to the killing of Edgar Damalerio, and not because he was a journalist.

That does not mean however that CMFR does not condemns Amoro's killing. Without witnesses like him to journalist killings, it will be hard -- if not downright impossible -- to indict those who are behind the killings.

If there's one thing that the killings of witnesses to media murders show, it reflects the pattern of impunity and the prevalence of lawlessness and violence in the Philippines.

Journalist Edgar Amoro's alleged murderer caught by Pagadian police -- RSF

Mohammed Maulana, the alleged murderer of journalist Edgar Amoro, was arrested on 18 September 2006 in Pagadian (the capital of Zamboanga del Sur province on the southern island of Mindanao). Maulana was caught with three accomplices while committing a robbery and is now being held in Pagadian's provincial prison. He is suspected of murdering Amoro in February 2005 because Amoro was the key witness in the May 2002 murder of fellow journalist Edgar Damalerio, 13 May 2002.

For background information on this case, see: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12446