The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins its affiliate the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) in condemning the murder of Brigada News Circulation Manager Alfredo “Dodong” Velarde Jr on November 11.
Velarde, 42, was shot dead at about 3:50 a.m. by unidentified assailants while entering the Brigada News compound in General Santos City, Mindanao, in the southern Philippines. Police are reviewing closed-circuit television footage of the incident, though the shooting itself was not on camera, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports.
Police are yet to establish the motive for Velarde’s murder. Ernie Gabonada, station manager of Brigada News stablemate DXYM Brigada News FM, has suggested the murder could relate to a number of personal disputes Velarde was involved in.
“The IFJ is deeply concerned by the increase in attacks on media professionals in the Philippines in 2011,” IFJ Asia-Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said.
“We call upon President Benigno Aquino III to honour his pre-election commitment to defend press freedom in the Philippines, by seeing that all media workers’ murders are investigated and punished quickly, irrespective of potential motives.”
Velarde is the seventh media worker to have been killed in the Philippines so far this year. In 2010, four media workers were killed in the Philippines.
His death comes less than two weeks before the second anniversary of the Ampatuan Town Massacre on November 23, 2009, in which 32 media workers were killed in a massacre of 58 people. Fourteen of the media workers killed in the massacre were from General Santos City.
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