MANILA, Philippines—Shocked members of Philippine and international media groups, and the European Union Tuesday demanded answers from authorities after the unprecedented murders of at least 12 Filipino journalists who became ensnared in a feud between rival political clans.

The Philippines has long been recognized as one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, but hardened reporters in the country were reduced to shock by the scale of the slaughter.

“I don’t know how to term what the perpetrators did. It is of course a brazen, barbaric act,” said Jay Sonza, the station manager for local television station UNTV, which has two reporters confirmed killed and another two missing.

“These things cannot happen in a supposedly democratic country,” Sonza said.

“This kind of an attack on the members of the fourth estate didn’t even happen in war zones. There needs to be a thorough investigation and the government must bring to justice those responsible,” Sonza said.

State of emergency questioned

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) blasted Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza’s recommendation for a declaration of a state of emergency in Maguindanao, calling it a “tacit admission that neither the military nor the Philippine National Police can cope with the situation without being armed with special powers.”

The CMFR said a state of emergency would provide the legal basis for preventing media from covering the investigation of the massacre and elections in the area.

“We affirm that it is the media’s crucial task to provide the citizenry the information it needs so it can make such decisions as to who to vote for as well as others related to its well-being and safety.”

But the CMFR also reiterated that journalists must stay safe and steer clear from partisanship in the next elections.

Black shirts

In Iloilo City, reporters wore black shirts in their coverage to condemn the killings. “I still could not believe that this could have happened,” veteran journalist Maricar Calubiran said.

Broadcasters tackled the killings and were at times at a loss for words to describe the brutality of the killings.

“This is senseless. They killed women, lawyers, journalists, all unarmed,” said Jonathan Gelangarin, station manager of radio station dySI of GMA network.

The Philippine Press Institute (PPI) urged the government to immediately arrest the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

In a statement, Isagani Yambot, PPI chair and president, said the killing of six political followers of a candidate, two women lawyers and 13 journalists was a senseless slaughter that cries out for the punishment of the killers to the full extent of the law. [The number of fatalities has risen to 46.]

The PPI said: “The victims were political supporters who were exercising their constitutional right to engage in a political activity and the journalists were only performing their duty to cover the news.”

“The massacre of 13 journalists is a black day in Philippine journalism,” the PPI added.

The PPI urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to disarm all political warlords, dismantle private armies and intensify the drive against loose firearms, of which there are more than 110,000 in Mindanao alone.

Senseless act

The Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC) said it could not find enough words to describe its revulsion of the senseless act by barbaric people who have no respect at all for value of human lives.

“If this kind of slaughter continues to happen, then what use is a democratic exercise like the 2010 elections when people are viciously murdered for the sake of political expediency?” it said in a statement.

The MOPC urged authorities to bring the full force of the law in hunting down those responsible for the gruesome murders.

Worst blow

Samahang Plaridel, a group of veteran journalists, said the cause of Philippine journalism for the pursuit of truth suffered its worst blow in Maguindanao allegedly at the hands of local government officials and police authorities.

It said it “condoles with the families of the massacre victims whose grief can only be assuaged by the immediate apprehension of the perpetrators, regardless of their political affiliation.”

The Department of Journalism of the UP College of Mass Communication said it was holding the Arroyo administration accountable for the continuing state of lawless violence in Maguindanao and other parts of the country.

Global press freedom and rights groups said the event stained the Philippines’ international reputation.

“Never in the history of journalism have the news media suffered such a heavy loss of life in one day,” said Clothilde Le Coz, the US director for the global press watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

Barbarism

The Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Seapa) said the Philippines had one of the highest rates of journalist killings in the world “even prior to this heinous episode of barbarism.”

Seapa said that “warlordism” in Maguindanao was just a symptom that beleaguers Philippine democracy.

“The clear role that warlordism plays in this, one of the bloodiest episodes in recent Philippine history, should not absolve the government of its accountability for the larger environment it has tolerated, patronized and therefore nurtured,” it said.

Before the massacre, the New York-based monitor Committee to Protect Journalists ranked the Philippines as the fourth deadliest country for journalists in terms of reporters’ deaths for 2009.

Monday’s killings, however, will see the Philippines leapfrog Somalia, Iraq and Pakistan into the top spot.

“I condemn in the strongest possible terms the barbaric killing … of innocent civilians, including women, journalists and lawyers, who were preparing to participate in the electoral process in the Philippines,” said the European Union’s external relations commissioner.

“In the face of this atrocity, the rule of law and democracy have to prevail,” Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement.

NUJP statement

In a press conference in Quezon City, Nonoy Espina, vice chair of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, pointed out that the location of the massacre was not even an arena of war.

“These journalists were not just caught in a crossfire,” Espina said.

He called on government to get to the bottom of the massacre.

The Publishers Association of the Philippines Inc. (PAPI) bewailed that the victims included journalists, some of them publishers and PAPI members, who were just doing their job as mass media practitioners.

PAPI president Juan P. Dayang said the “victims deserve justice.”

The College Editors Guild of the Philippines likewise denounced the attack, calling the incident a gross incompetence of the government in protecting its citizens.

Wearing black shirts, some 200 protesters said a prayer in Quezon City for the victims and demanded justice for them. Reports from Alcuin Papa and Julie M. Aurelio in Manila; Nestor P. Burgos Jr., Inquirer Visayas; and Agence France-Presse