(Manila) A Filipino journalist was shot dead in the Philippines on Wednesday, the latest in a long list of media professionals murdered there, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) said.
Jesus Malabanan was killed in Calbayog City in central Samar province, according to a statement from the organization posted on his Facebook page.
Jesus Malabanan was correspondent of Manila Standard in the central Luzon region, north of Manila, the newspaper told AFP, confirming the journalist’s death.
He was also a longtime freelance writer for the international news agency Reuters.
Participant in a Pulitzer Prize
The agency said it was “deeply saddened” by the death of Jesus Malabanan, who worked on his coverage of the 2017 war on drugs in the Philippines. This series of articles won Reuters a Pulitzer Prize in 2018.
The branch of the NUJP in the province of Pampanga, located on the island of Luçon, condemned this “absurd assassination”.
Calbayog police declined to provide details.
Journalist Manny Mogato, who also worked for Reuters, said on his Facebook page that Malabanan had received threats before his assassination. “Jess was very helpful to Reuters in its coverage of the War on Drugs. Reuters helped him go into hiding for months in Samar when threatened in San Fernando, ”Mogato said.
According to Mogato, quoted by the news site Remind, Malabanan was killed in the small store he ran with his wife in Calbayog. “His wife said Jess was watching television at 6 pm… when a gunshot rang out. She did not see the shooter but the gunshot hit Jess in the head, killing him instantly, ”the reporter said.
The Philippines is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, and most of their killers go unpunished.
End of October, Orlando Dinoy, reporter for the online site Newsline Philippines and presenter on Energy FM, had been killed six times by an armed man who broke into his apartment in Bansalan, on the island of Mindanao.
It was the 21e journalist killed since President Rodrigo Duterte came to power in 2016, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said.
In a report released in October before these last two murders, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked the Philippines seventh on its Global Impunity Index, created in 2008, with 13 murders of journalists. not elucidated.
With La Presse