A radio broadcaster was gunned down in the Philippines on the way home from his late-night show, the second journalist killed in the country in less than 24 hours, police said yesterday.
Two motorcycle-riding gunmen shot Jovelito Agustin, 37, a reporter and anchorman of local radio station DZJC Aksyon Radyo in northern Ilocos Norte province, on Tuesday night, police official Sterling Blanco said.
He was killed in Laoag City as he and his nephew rode a motorcycle home after an evening broadcast, Blanco said. Agustin died in a hospital before dawn yesterday, while his nephew was slightly hurt.
PHOTO: EPA
Blanco told reporters that investigators were trying to determine the motive for the attack. Unidentified gunmen also fired shots at Agustin’s house on May 7, he said.
DZJC reporter Nick Malasig said Agustin told co-workers he had received threats through text messages, and suspected a local politician he criticized on air for alleged corruption could be after him.
Tuesday’s attack happened less than 24 hours after another radio broadcaster was killed. A gunman shot Desidario Camangyan of Sunshine FM radio as he hosted a singing contest in southern Davao Oriental province.
Journalists there said Camangyan often criticized politicians and illegal loggers on his radio program.
The Philippines prides itself on having among the freest media in Southeast Asia, but it is also one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists.
In the world’s deadliest single assault on media workers, at least 30 reporters and their staff were among 57 people massacred on Nov. 30 in the southern Philippines. The victims were in a vehicle convoy targeted in political violence before last month’s national election.
Prior to that attack, 75 media workers had been killed in the country since 2001, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
Meanwhile, security forces rescued an elderly Swiss man kidnapped over two months ago by suspected Islamist militants in a lawless part of the southern Philippines, the military said yesterday.
Carl Rieth, 72, was abandoned in a coastal village outside the southern port city of Zamboanga by his captors, who fled after seeing police and army troops who rushed to the area following a tip from an informant, officials said.
“He was rescued before dawn at 3am,” regional military chief Lieutenant General Benjamin Dolorfino told reporters. “Follow up operations [against the kidnappers] are ongoing.”
Rieth, whose friends said suffered from pneumonia and a weak heart, was immediately rushed to a private hospital, Dolorfino said.
His freedom came just weeks after his kidnappers released a video in which the frail-looking hostage pleaded to be freed.
In the video, Rieth said his unidentified captors had demanded at least 20 million pesos (US$435,000) in exchange for his freedom, relatives and friends who saw the footage said.
At least eight heavily armed men snatched Rieth, a businessman and a long-time resident of Zamboanga, from his beachfront home on April 4.
Rieth had a Swiss father and Filipina mother and was well-respected within the local business community, friends said.
No one claimed responsibility for his abduction, although Dolorfino said the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group was suspected of being behind the crime.
“That’s our initial information, but it is still being verified,” Dolorfino said.
Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants on the US government’s list of foreign terrorist organizations that is well known for staging kidnappings for ransom in the southern Philippines.
The group is also blamed for the Philippines’ worst terrorist attacks, including the 2004 bombing of a passenger ferry that killed more than 100 people in Manila Bay.
However, a complex array of other Muslim armed groups and pirates operate in the southern Philippines and have for years also snatched locals as well as foreigners to secure often huge ransom rewards.
Elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim rebel group that has been waging a separatist insurgency in the southern Mindanao region since the 1970s, have also been involved in kidnappings.
Ransoms are often paid to secure the hostages’ freedom, even though authorities typically deny money is handed over.
In Rieth’s case, both the military and police denied any ransom changed hands.
“No,” Dolorfino said when asked about a ransom payment being paid.
Local police chief Senior Superintendent Edwin de Ocampo told reporters in Zamboanga that at least one of the eight gunmen who seized Rieth was believed to be also involved in the kidnapping of an Irish missionary last year.
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