END IMPUNITY: Today and tomorrow — the second anniversary of the Ampatuan massacre of 58 Filipinos, 32 of them journalists — we ask President Noynoy Aquino to be as single-minded in “bringing to justice” the mass murderers as he is with throwing his political foes into jail.

We refuse to forget that grim Monday in November two years ago when some citizens on their way to file certificates of candidacy, with media members covering them, were massacred by heavily armed men and buried in pits dug by a backhoe or dumped off the less travelled highway in sitio Masalay in Ampatuan, Maguindanao.

Groups around the world espousing press freedom will mark the day, Nov. 23, as the first International Day to End Impunity (IDEI), a global call to demand justice for those persecuted or terminated for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

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ACTION, NOT WORDS: It is embarrassing to see foreign entities showing more concern than local authorities in bringing to a just closure the two-year-old crime that made the Philippines the capital of the world map on the violation of human rights and press freedom and the killing of journalists.

We hope Malacañang will do something this week about the painfully slow prosecution of the culprits, something more reassuring than the usual hollow statements about justice and press freedom. In this country, political saliva and ghost-written speeches come cheap.

President Aquino and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima are not members of the separate judicial branch, but they have shown by their aggressive prosecution of Rep. Gloria Arroyo that when they set their minds to it, they can speed up the grind of the wheels of justice.

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STATS ON KILLLINGS: The Toronto-based International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a network of 95 free expression and free press organizations worldwide, is lead organizer of the IDEI.

According to IFEX, journalists, media workers, and other communicators from Mexico to Russia, from Iraq to Somalia, who speak or report the truth continue to be murdered with impunity, sometimes by agents of the state.

Figures from the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines show that 146 media practitioners have been killed in the country since 1986, when the collapse of martial rule ushered in the restoration of democracy.

But out of these cases, there have been only 10 convictions — and not one of the convicts was the mastermind behind the murder.

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SOLIDARITY: The board of trustees of the Capampangan in Media Inc. (CAMI), a professional organization of journalists tracing their roots to Pampanga, issued this statement yesterday:

“As the media community remembers the Ampatuan massacre in 2010 when 32 of our fellow journalists on coverage were systematically gunned down by henchmen of Maguindanao warlords, we stand in solidarity with the victims and their families in their difficult quest for justice.

“We in CAMI join our brothers in the trade throughout the world in pledging a common commitment to see this case through.

“While we in the Philippines have our Bill of Rights and other constitutional guarantees for the free and full flow of information, there are brazen and brutal attempts to manipulate and obstruct the revelation of truth in the mass media.

“We take this occasion, therefore, to press the government, especially Malacañang and the Congress, to enact soonest a genuine Freedom of Information Act.”

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AMPATUANS: Under the Aquino administration, five work-related killings of journalists and 15 active media court cases have been reported, including the Ampatuan massacre where only 93 of the 196 suspects have been detained.

Twenty-eight of the 196 suspects carry Ampatuan surnames, including Andal Sr., Andal Jr., Akmad, Zaldy, Sajid and Anwar. All of them are detained, although only two Ampatuans have been arraigned.

To get off the hook, some of them have been offering themselves as state witnesses against former President Arroyo on her alleged manipulation of past elections.

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SC DEFIED: A constitutional crisis marked by a showdown between the Executive and the Judiciary appears to have been averted with the filing of election sabotage charges against congresswoman Arroyo with the Pasay City Regional Trial Court.

Since it was the RTC that ordered the arrest of Ms Arroyo, the barring of her departure for abroad had been deemed by many people as having been legitimized and that De Lima’s defiance of a Temporary Restraining Order of the Supreme Court has been mooted.

No, it has not been mooted. The secretary’s refusal to obey or enforce the TRO of the SC is distinct and separate from the RTC order that she welcomed. The contempt was made even more glaring when she obeyed a lower court while defying the highest court of the land.

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WHICH IS WHICH?: There is still a little confusion, mostly resulting from sloppy reporting in media, over political concepts. Some readers are asking how – as reported — the government can question the Supreme Court’s TRO.

They point out that government includes the Executive (Malacañang), the Legislature (the Congress) and the Judiciary (Supreme Court and lower courts). So when newspapers report that the government is challenging the SC, it appears that the SC, as part of government, is questioning itself.

The confusion arises from the some media’s seeming glossing over, if not ignorance of, the difference between the government and the administration. Sometimes the media talk of the “Aquino government” when probably they mean the “Aquino administration.”

The administration changes periodically, like when a new president is elected, but the government stays.

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