AN INTERNATIONAL media watchdog has ranked the Philippines fourth in countries worldwide where journalists are slain and the killers go free.
In a report published on Thursday, October 27, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) placed Somalia as the worst country for the second year in a row where the militant group Al-Shabaab is suspected in the majority of media murders.
The 2016 global impunity index ranked Iraq and Syria, second and third, respectively.
According to the global media watchdog, the highest rates of impunity in the killings of journalists is due to Islamist militant groups.
But the Philippines' ranking, the watchdog said, is "cemented by its failure to prosecute any perpetrators behind the 2009 massacre in Maguindanao where 32 journalists and media workers were brutally murdered."
"Impunity in the murders of journalists emboldens would-be killers and forces the media to operate in a climate of fear, which in turn restricts information available to the public," said Elisabeth Witchel, author of the report and CPJ's consultant for the Global Campaign Against Impunity.
"States need to urgently address this situation with robust mechanisms to protect, investigate, and prosecute when journalists are threatened or attacked," she said.
The report found that although most of the unpunished killings of journalists were carried out by militants, criminal groups and government officials are also behind the killings of journalists in other countries, including the Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, Russia and India.
The impunity index calculates the number of unsolved killings over a 10-year period compared to the percentage of each country's population.
CPJ publishes its result annually to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists on November 2.
CPJ said this year's result was based on deaths between September 1, 2006 and August 31, 2016. Only those countries with five or more unsolved cases for this period are included on the index.
The watchdog was able to record 13 countries that fell within the index. There were 14 last year.
Here is the complete list:
1. Somalia
2. Iraq
3. Syria
4. Philippines
5. South Sudan
6. Mexico
7. Afghanistan
8. Pakistan
9. Brazil
10. Russia
11. Bangladesh
12. Nigeria
13. India
Six countries, out of 13 on the list -- Bangladesh, Brazil, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia and Somalia -- convicted people charged with killing journalists in the past year.
CPJ said around 95 percent of the victims were local reporters, most of them covering politics and corruption. (VLA/AP)