CAMP OLIVAS, Pampanga — President Rodrigo Duterte wants all media killings in the country to be solved by year 2020.
This was disclosed on Thursday by Undersecretary Joel Sy Egco, executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS), who personally came over here to receive from Chief Supt. Amador Corpus, Police Regional Office (PRO)-3 (Central Luzon) director, the documents on the journalists killed in the region.
“The President would like to make our country better, safe and free,” Egco said as he noted that the purpose of his visit here is to get all the data on the cases of violence perpetrated upon media workers by state and non-state forces in compliance with Section 4 of Administrative Order (AO) No. 1.
The AO provides that the PTFoMS should come up with an inventory of all cases of violence against media workers, which will be classified under the following categories: unsolved cases; cases under investigation; cases under preliminary investigation; cases under trial; and cases under appeal.
There are at least nine cases of media killing in the region from year 2000 to 2015.
“The task force will look or investigate if these cases are related to work or not. If related, this is considered as media killing,” Egco said.
He also said that the PRO-3 was the first police regional office he visited to gather data which the PTFoMS Technical Working Group would reexamine using the AO’s No. 1 criteria for violence against media workers in order to produce a harmonized list of cases.
He vowed to visit all the police regional offices nationwide to gather all data cases as part of the task force’s continuing efforts to make the country safe for media personalities.
Meanwhile, Corpus, as he turned over to the PTFoMS the nine case folders, said that five of those cases were solved, two cases were pending in court and the two other cases were still under police investigation.
The PRO-3 head said that the police officers handling the case were focused until the resolution of the crime.
He likewise said that police would still further investigate the case even though the family of the victim was no longer interested in pursuing it.
“We hope that in year 2020, there will be no more record of media killing cases,” Egco said. (Ric Sapnu/PNA)
