UNESCO denounces yet another journalist’s murder in Philippines

Denouncing it as “a severe blow to democracy,” the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has condemned the murder of yet another journalist in the Philippines, the 10th this year, and called on the authorities to take active measures to bring those responsible to trial.

Allan Dizon, a photojournalist for the daily The Freeman and the tabloid Banat News who was killed in the city of Cebu on 27 November, is reported to have recently written about drug-trafficking in a Cebu neighbourhood, according to the non-governmental organization Reporters without Borders.

“His death is a severe blow to democracy, which largely depends on the ability of the media to collect and disseminate information to the public,” UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura said in a statement yesterday.

Before Mr. Dizon’s assassination, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) reported that nine journalists had been killed in the Philippines this year alone and a total of 45 had been murdered since the establishment of democracy in 1986. More journalists have been killed in the Philippines this year than in any other country, except Iraq.

According to WAN, none of those responsible for the murder of journalists in the Philippines has been convicted.