ZAMBOANGA CITY, 27 March 2005 — A woman journalist was gunned down in front of her children on Thursday night in the southern Philippine city of Tacurong, police said yesterday.
Police quoted witnesses as saying the gunman, accompanied by a lookout, entered the home of Marlene Esperat on Ilang-Ilang Street at about 7:30 p.m., greeted her “Good evening ma’am,” then shot her on the right eye before fleeing on foot.
Esperat died instantly, police said.
The National Union of Journalist of the Philippines (NUJP) said the 45-year-old victim was apparently killed to silence her.
Esperat had been writing mostly local corruption stories involving public and police officials for the weekly tabloid The Midland Review in Tacurong, a city in the province of Sultan Kudarat in Central Mindanao.
George Esperat, the victim’s husband who was not at home at the time of the attack, told investigators his wife had been receiving death threats from unidentified men.
“My wife had many enemies because of her (corruption) exposés. I already told her to stop, but she just shrugged it off, saying, she’s just doing her work,” he said.
Charlie Garcia, the victim’s elder brother, told the Inquirer that Esperat had been receiving threats, prompting the police to provide her with a security escort.
But Garcia said his sister gave her security escort a Lenten break. “She told her bodyguard to go home as it was Holy Week,” he said.
Garcia said Esperat had decided not to leave her house that day because she had no bodyguard.
“Unfortunately, the assailant perpetrated the attack right inside her house,” Garcia said.
After the killing, the gunman casually walked out of the house and fled on foot along with another man, who had served as a lookout, Garcia said.
Before the shooting, the gunman was seen buying cigarettes at a sari-sari store just beside the victim’s house, according to investigators.
“Nobody suspected he was a killer. The neighbors thought he was just a visitor,” Garcia said.
Supt. Raul Supiter, the police chief of Tacurong, also said murder could be related to Esperat’s work.
“We are still establishing the motive of the killing but we are not discounting it could have been due to her work. She has been writing hard-hitting commentaries,” he said.
Supiter told a radio station that investigators were also looking into Esperat’s previous job as ombudsman at the Department of Agriculture office in Central Mindanao as the possible motive for the killing.
As resident ombudsman, Esperat had filed charges against various agriculture officials for alleged corruption.
Her campaign against corruption in the agency led to her resignation in 2004.
Carlos Conde, NUJP secretary-general, said frustration with the government’s response was common among those who are fighting corruption.
“In Esperat’s case, she knew a lot of things,” he said.
Conde said the government might have even “contributed to her demise” for failing to address the cases she had filed against some people.
He also called on the police “to do their best in solving Ezperat’s murder.”
“More and more of our colleagues are being murdered and it is the responsibility of the police to stop the violence by ensuring that the killers are brought to justice,” he said. “This culture of impunity must stop,” he said.
Esperat was the 4th journalist murdered this year and the 65th since 1986, according to the NUJP.
The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists has branded the Philippines as the world’s second deadliest place for journalists after Iraq last year, with 13 journalists killed.
The International Press Institute, in its annual report, also lumped the Philippines together with Russia, Haiti, and Mexico where journalists face extreme danger.
The director general of UNESCO condemned last week the assassination of two Filipino journalists — Romeo Sanchez and Arnulfo Villanueva.
Sanchez, of the Bayan Muna party, was a broadcaster at DZNL in San Fernando City. He was shot dead by a gunman in a market in Baguio City on March 9.
Villanueva, a columnist for the Asian Star Express Balita community newspaper, was shot dead on the night of Feb. 28 in Naic town, Cavite province. The first Filipino journalist killed this year was Edgar Amoro, a witness to the murder of Edgar Damalerio, a broadcaster, in 2002. Amoro was shot dead in Pagadian City on Feb. 2.
Those responsible should be tried and punished if freedom of expression is to be protected in the country, UNESCO director general Koichiro Matsuura said.
He said the use of assassination to silence journalists was a grievous attack on democracy. (With reports from Inquirer News Service & Agencies)
