PIMENTEL CONDEMNS SLAYING OF ANOTHER MINDANAO JOURNALIST

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today condemned the extra-judicial killing of journalist Hernani Pastolero of the Mindanao Express.

Pimentel said the slaying of Pastolero and other media practitioners would have been prevented had the government been decisive and persistent in resolving the string of political and media killings and in prosecuting their perpetrators.

With most of these extra-judicial killings unsolved and the death squads and masterminds behind them going scot-free, the slaughter of crusading but defenseless newsmen continues just as we had feared, he said.

The lone senator from Mindanao said the refusal of Malacañang to make public the findings and recommendations of the Melo Commission on extra-judicial killings of leftist activists and journalists betrays the insensitivity and callousness of the Arroyo government in the wake of these unabated tragedies and the sufferings inflicted on the families of the victims.

The lawless Arroyo government is responsible for the continuing killings of activists, journalists and other civilians, Pimentel said.

He voiced the suspicion that Malacañang s claim that the Melo Commissions work is still incomplete is nothing more than a ruse to justify its refusal to reveal to the public the full contents of the report of the fact-finding panel.

He insisted that the Commissions report, whether it is just preliminary or not, should now be fully disclosed so that the perpetrators of the extra-judicial killings as identified by the investigators should be prosecuted and brought before the bar of justice.

Pimentel said there is a grain of truth behind the allegations raised by human rights organizations that the Arroyo government is deliberately keeping the Melo Commission report under wraps because it is afraid of alienating the military which is being blamed for most of the killings.