Breeding impunity

An efficient justice system is indispensable in economic growth and human development. It’s good that the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Manila was over before the sixth anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre – an egregious example of the weakness of Philippine justice – rolled around.

That’s the massacre of 58 people, over half of them journalists, on Nov. 23, 2009, and not the slaughter of 44 police commandos of the Special Action Force last January also in Maguindanao. If the 2009 Maguindanao massacre is nowhere close to resolution after six years, the survivors and relatives of the commandos killed in Mamasapano have a long wait ahead for justice.

Legal minds, notably the late former senator Joker Arroyo, had warned that it could take 200 years before justice is rendered in the 2009 massacre. The suspected masterminds, including Andal Ampatuan Jr. who is accused of personally leading the mass murder, are still held without bail, but the case is crawling along.

Last July, one of the principal defendants, clan patriarch and former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. died of a heart attack. He had suffered from liver cancer and reportedly maintained his innocence until his last moment.

The elder Ampatuan died without his professed innocence established in court. Perhaps he might have been telling the truth, but will the nation ever know? The slow wheels of Philippine justice are unfair not only to crime victims and their relatives but also to the wrongly accused.

The weakness of the criminal justice system also threatens witnesses and breeds impunity. Media groups observe Nov. 23 as the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, although in 2013 the UN General Assembly set the date of its own annual observance on Nov. 2.

The Philippines has consistently ranked high in the Impunity Index and is rated as one of the five most dangerous places in the world for journalists. This is not just because of the Maguindanao massacre, but also because media workers continue to be murdered. Three were shot dead just days apart in August, bringing to 29 the number of journalists killed during the Aquino administration. That impunity arises from the failure of the state to bring murderers to justice, with the Maguindanao massacre case as the worst example.