RP improves ranking on RSF press freedom index
Fewer murders, libel suits from Arroyo associates
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 01:34pm (Mla time) 10/17/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- The Philippines inched its way up the 2007 Worldwide Press Freedom Index of the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), placing 128th from 142nd place last year, which it shared with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Explaining the country’s improved standing, which the press freedom watchdog classified among “unexpected improvements,” RSF said there were “fewer murders” of journalists this year than in previous years and that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's “associates brought fewer defamation [libel] actions against journalists and news media.”
Statistics compiled by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) show five media practitioners killed this year, the lowest tally since 2002, when three journalists were murdered, and the first time in the last four years that media killings have returned to single digit counts.
The NUJP counted 13 media killings in 2004, 10 in 2005, and 12 last year, earning the country the label of second most murderous for journalists next to war-torn Iraq. A total of 54 journalists have been murdered since Arroyo came to power in 2001, the highest death toll under any sitting chief executive, including the 14-year Marcos dictatorship.
In May this year, the President’s husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, dropped the multiple libel suits he had filed against more than 40 journalists after he underwent a delicate heart operation.
The Philippines’ standing in this year’s RSF press freedom index is also better than 2005’s 139th place but remained well behind its 111th ranking in 2004, 118th in 2003 and 89th in 2002, when the press freedom watchdog first began rating the level of press freedom in 169 countries.
Also this year, the African country of Eritrea dislodged North Korea from last place in the RSF index.
"There is nothing surprising about this," the group said. "Even if we are not aware of all the press freedom violations in North Korea and Turkmenistan, which are second and third from last, Eritrea deserves to be at the bottom. The privately-owned press has been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki and the few journalists who dare to criticize the regime are thrown in prison. We know that four of them have died in detention and we have every reason to fear that others will suffer the same fate."
“Outside Europe -- in which the top 14 countries are located -- no region of the world has been spared censorship or violence towards journalists,” RSF noted.
“Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian [Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea], five are African [Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea], four are in the Middle East [Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran], three are former Soviet republics [Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan] and one is in the Americas (Cuba),” it added.
The group also said it was "particularly disturbed by the situation in Burma,” which was in 164th place, noting that "the military junta's crackdown on demonstrations bodes ill for the future of basic freedoms in this country.”
It also lamented that “China [163th] stagnates near the bottom of the index. With less than a year to go to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the reforms and the releases of imprisoned journalists so often promised by the authorities seem to be a vain hope."
The group said military coups and war were responsible for many countries’ slide in ratings but also noted that “government repression no longer ignores bloggers” with the Internet “occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations.”
"We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship," RSF said.
"More and more governments have realized that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it,” it said. “The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media."
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