A 56-YEAR-OLD female radio broadcaster was shot and killed by gunmen on a motorbike near her home in Zamboanga City on Mindanao island of the Catholic-majority Philippines on Tuesday, October 22, 2024.
The victim was identified as Ma. Vilma Rodriguez, 56, a radio program anchor for Barangay Action Center on 105.9 E-Media Production Network, Inc., based in the city.
She was shot three times in the abdomen by unknown assailants while sitting at a store with other family members just meters from her house in the village of Tumaga, Zamboanga City, shortly after 8 p.m. on Tuesday.
Rodriguez, a single mother of four children, managed to walk toward her house and told her daughter she had been shot, according to Julie Alipala, another Zamboanga-based journalist who first alerted the public to the victim’s death.
Although Rodriguez was rushed to Zamboanga City Medical Center, her attending physicians declared her dead at 9:37 p.m. on Tuesday.
Call for justice
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) Zamboanga City Chapter immediately condemned Rodriguez’s killing.
“We condemn this atrocious attack. We urge the local police to conduct a deeper investigation, unmask the perpetrators and their mastermind. We don’t need another unsolved case that might end up as just another statistic in the growing list of murder victims,” the NUJP-Zamboanga Chapter said in a statement.
Rey Bayoging, one of E-Media’s executives, disclosed to NUJP that Rodriguez had worked with them for about a year, adding that her radio program “was not a hard-hitting one.”
“We were told there are persons of interest. We, along with the Rodriguez family, are demanding justice. Why is it so easy to bring in guns to this city and kill people?” asked Bayoging, raising concerns about lax enforcement of firearms laws.
According to NUJP, Rodriguez is the second female journalist murdered in Zamboanga City, following the killing of radio broadcaster Gloria Martin on December 30, 1992.
Rodriguez became the fifth journalist to be killed under the administration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in June 2022, according to media groups.
In September 2022, radio reporter Rey Blanco was stabbed in the neck in the Negros Island region, followed by the shooting of broadcaster Percival Mabasa by motorcycle-riding gunmen in October 2022 in Manila.
In May 2023, broadcaster Crecenciano Bunduquin was killed by motorcycle-riding hitmen in Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro.
In November 2023, radioman Juan Jumalon was killed during a live broadcast by a lone gunman who pretended to be a listener inside the victim’s home-based radio station in Misamis Occidental.
Meanwhile, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) called upon the law enforcers to “conduct a swift and impartial probe into this atrocious incident.”
“We condemn this barbaric attack on Ma. Vilma Rodriguez— a journalist, barangay official, mother to four children, and model Filipino. These kinds of vile and atrocious acts have no place in our nation, which values freedom, democracy, and the rule of law above all,” PCO said in a statement on Wednesday.
“No stone should be left unturned in the pursuit of those culpable,” it added.
In a February 2024 report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights emphasized that the Philippines “remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists,” with 117 journalists killed in the country over the past 30 years, 81 of which remain unsolved.
The Philippines continues to be identified as the country where the “single worst massacre of journalists in history” occurred, following the “Maguindanao Massacre” on November 23, 2009, where 32 journalists, along with 26 others, were killed in the Maguindanao province on Mindanao island. | Samar Chronicle via Ronald O. Reyes
