A Philippine journalist has been shot dead in an ambush, police said yesterday, the latest such attack in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for the media.
Christopher Guarin was attacked late on Thursday by two unidentified men on a motorcycle as the 41-year-old radio commentator and newspaper publisher was driving in the southern port of General Santos, police said.
His wife sustained a superficial wound on her arm, while their nine-year-old daughter was unharmed, police investigator Gerald Jubelag said.
He said no suspects had been arrested, but authorities were looking at a possible business rivalry as a motive.
“He jumped out of the car, so we will not be caught by stray bullets,” said his widow, Lyn Guarin.
“I saw my husband lying on the ground helpless, pleading for his life. It fell on deaf ears,” she told reporters.
Freddie Solinap, business manager of the tabloid Tatak published by Guarin, said the victim had frequently received anonymous death threats, the last one a text message on his mobile phone hours before the attack.
“If you show up at the station tonight, we’re going to kill you,” it said.
Guarin later showed up for work and read out the death threat on his early-evening talk show on the dxMD station.
He had been investigated by police, but cleared in the shooting death last year of the circulation manager of a rival local newspaper publisher.
Guarin was the first journalist killed in the Philippines this year, said Edwin Espejo, an official of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, which has been campaigning for greater protection for reporters.
Media organizations and rights groups say the Philippines is one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists, with six media workers killed and another wounded last year.
A total of 148 journalists have been killed in the country since 1986, according to the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines.
The deadliest year for the country’s media occurred in 2009, when 32 media workers were among 57 people murdered in the south, allegedly by members of a clan, who wanted to eliminate a rival’s political challenge.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS