RP in media slay 'shame list'UNITED NATIONS - The Philippines is one of 13 countries that are the worst offenders in letting killers of journalists get away with murder, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
"We are hoping governments are embarrassed to be on the list" and will take action, said Joel Simon, the committee's executive director.
Simon said the countries on the list have law enforcement institutions but generally lack the political will to go after the killers of journalists.
The committee said governments in the 13 countries - from war-torn Iraq and Somalia to peaceful democracies including Mexico, Russia and India - have consistently failed to solve murders where journalists were targeted from 1998 through 2007.
There are at least 199 unsolved murders in these countries during that 10-year period. Twenty-four of these cases are in the Philippines. The other unsolved murders number 79 in Iraq, at least 20 in Colombia, 14 in Russia, nine in Sierra Leone, eight in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan, seven in Afghanistan and Mexico, and five in Somalia, Nepal and India.
"This is a naming and shaming exercise," Prof. Sheila Coronel, the Filipina director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism of the Columbia University Journalism School, said at a news conference of the launching of the new Impunity Index at the UN headquarters Wednesday.
The new index was released by the committee in advance of World Press Freedom Day on Saturday.
Poster from PSNA
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