|
Journo killed in Philippines
03/05/2006 15:58 - (SA)
Manila - Unidentified gunmen have shot dead a freelance journalist who also worked for the government's tax collection department in the Philippines, police said on World Press Freedom Day Wednesday.
Nicholas Cervantes, 66, was shot dead on Tuesday by five men just after he left his home in a suburb of the Philippine capital, said Senior Superintendent Ericson Velasquez.
Besides his work as a journalist, Cervantes was also known to be a "confidential agent" of the internal revenue bureau, Velasquez said.
Police have yet to determine a motive for the attack.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said Cervantes wrote for various publications in the southern Philippines but that they did not know if his murder was linked to his job as a journalist or his involvement with the tax-collection agency.
In its 2006 annual report, the Paris-based international journalists group, Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) declared that "after Iraq, the Philippines is the most dangerous country for journalists," with seven journalists murdered in 2005.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines says that before Cervantes' death, two journalists had been murdered this year.
- AFP
|
News
