If, you, do, not, speak, for, us

Another media practitioner has been gunned down.

I don’t easily break into a white rage. What I conjured up in my mind was someone, or maybe myself, mounting a podium in slo-mo then mouthing Sophocles: ``Who is the slayer, who the victim?’’

And the adrenaline having risen, to declare with Kennedyesque pathos: ``If, you, do, not, speak, for, us, you, are, killing, us. And, also, yourselves.’’

That was just my mind trying to tame the anger that was surging. All I wanted to say in street-corner language was an exploding, ``BS to you all who did this, and may you be cursed even in the afterlife.’’ But then one didn’t say such things, even silently in one’s heart, while Christendom was commemorating the passion of Jesus and his rising from the dead.

Come to think of it, besides ourselves, who is speaking up for the journalists? Who are the individuals, what are the groups and institutions out there that will come to our defense? By speaking, I mean doing something concrete and reaping results.



The government, the church and religious communities, civil society, entertainment and sports celebrities, vendors, jeepney drivers, environmentalists, the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, students, battered women, abused children, drug dependents, rape and kidnap victims, the literati and the culturati, readers and listeners, prostitutes, the urban poor, the rural poor, the indigenous people, intellectuals, professionals?

Who? Who in our address book, cell phone directory and email list? Perhaps no one? The bleakest, self-pitying thought was in my mind when I learned that one more media practitioner/whistleblower was gunned down last Holy Thursday.

No one. Else why does the killing not stop?

Marlene Garcia-Esperat, 45, was murdered on the night of Holy Thursday. So much like ``On the night he was betrayed…’’ of the Holy Thursday scenario, only this was Tacurong, Sultan Kudarat. Esperat was shot in the face in front of her two sons. Her husband heard the shot.

While working as a chemist at the Department of Agriculture, Esperat uncovered a lot of anomalies and kept exposing them for several years until she left in exasperation. She turned media practitioner and filed cases of corruption with the Ombudsman. She just knew too much. (Full story in the March 29 Inquirer.)

Esperat was the fourth media practitioner killed this year, the 17th since last year. If you consider the more than 60 or so killed since 1986, 17 deaths in the past year and three months is too many. In fact, the Philippines has been declared the second most dangerous place for journalists, next to Iraq. The Philippines as ``killing fields’’ for journalists was featured in the March 21 issue of Time magazine. Three pages were devoted to this dishonorable reputation.

Here it’s not stray bullets and bombs that kill, it’s bullets with the journalists’ name on them. And corruption in high places has a lot to do with the killings. C,o,r,r,u,p,t,i,o,n. Try and give that word a look by using the diacritical marks and the frownies found in your cell phone. You could do a few things with the letter U. I didn’t say, press SEND.

The motive for killing a whistleblower or a journalist is to silence. Revenge is more of an afterthought. Surely there were journalists who had been sucked into the dark side and left their integrity at home and later paid dearly for their indiscretions. An extortionist masquerading as a journalist, no matter how subtly, knows the law of the jungle and will have his comeuppance.

But journalists who do their job well are not a vanishing species. Alas, they are endangered.

Long before Esperat became a media practitioner, that is, as a columnist for a the Midland Review in Mindanao, she was already an irrepressible whistleblower in the government bureaucracy. She had the goods, the figures, the names. She was even featured in the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s i-magazine as ``Madame Witness.’’

How often have ordinary citizens approached journalists with ``inside goods’’, meaning the rot in the government bureaucracy, be it health, public works, education, defense, justice, and in the case of Esperat, agriculture which is synonymous with food. Almost always, the squealers or sources want to remain unknown. They are afraid for their lives. This is understandable.

What puzzles me is their seeming presumption that journalists are not afraid and are ready to be murdered, ready to leave their families and orphaned children grieving.

You don’t want to be identified? I asked someone gently. What about me, ako ang mapapatay dito (I’ll be the one killed here).

A press release from the office of Senator Mar Roxas says that the senate committee on public information and mass media will look into the finding of the International Federation of Journalists on the Philippines’ as killing fields. This was after Roxas filed Resolution 181 enabling an inquiry into the killing of journalists.

This is very good. But I hope they look into the root causes, the most obvious of which is corruption in government. The corrupt not only steal, they kill.

For today I had intended to write a whole piece on the recent Louie R. Prieto Awards for different categories of stories and photos that came out in the Inquirer. But then, the shocking news about Esperat... Four of the LRP awards were for the ``positive’’ categories. It’s not all bad and sad news, you know.

Joy comes in the morning. Like Mary of Magdala, I exclaim, ``Rabboni!’’ Feel the sound of it. And so Happy Easter.