MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/06 May) – Just a day after the observance of World Press Freedom Day another journalist was added to the already long list of media workers killed in the Philippines, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) today said.
Richard Nadjid, 35, married and a father of five, was gunned down the night of May 4, 2014 near his home in Bongao, Tawi-tawi province, NUJP said in a statement.
Nadjid, station manager of DxNN Power Myx FM station in Bongao, handled the station’s regular morning news and public affairs program.
NUJP said it is “disturbing” that Tawi-Tawi provincial police director Senior Supt. Joselito Salido has “immediately and baselessly dismissed the possibility of Nadjid’s murder being work-related”.
The group took exception to Salido’s calling the victim “just one disc jockey, a person that plays popular music on FM radio station,” and “not a journalist.”
“That the chief of a province’s police force can display not only insensitivity but, more alarming, ignorance reflects on the quality of what is supposed to be the country’s main law enforcement agency and explains why media murders and human rights violations in general continue to be committed with impunity,” NUJP said.
It added Salido’s But Salido’s attitude reflected that of President Benigno Aquino III.
It said the president himself “set the tone by dismissing media killings with the blanket insinuation that these murders were prodded by motives other than the victims’ work.”
Nadjid is the second member of Tawi-Tawi’s fourth estate killed and the 27th under Aquino, the worst year-on-year record under any administration.
On June 25, 2007, radio broadcaster Vicente Sumalpong, production supervisor of Radyo ng Bayan, was gunned down.
“As with ALL media killings in this country, the mastermind remains at large,” NUJP said. (MindaNews)