PHILIPPINES

MAY 19, 2005
Posted: June 15, 2005

Allan Sison, DZRH-Dagupan
THREATENED
Sison, operations manager and a program host for the local radio station in Lingayen in the northern Pangasinan province, was leaving a wedding reception at a hotel around 1 p.m. when he heard a shot. When Sison arrived at his truck in the hotel parking lot, he said, he saw a bullet had been fired into the tinted driver’s side window.

Sison told local reporters that the shooting could be related to his commentaries. He said that he had seen an official, the subject of his commentaries, near the hotel before the shooting, and that the official had given him dirty looks, according to the Manila Bulletin.

“The assassins may have thought that I was already inside the pickup,” said Sison

Lingayen police chief Superintendent Ricardo Zapata confirmed that a suspect had been identified and that he was a local politician, but refused to name him.

Sison told the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), a local press freedom group, that he had been receiving threatening phone calls and threats via text message in the days leading up to the shooting.

Local journalists’ groups condemned the shooting as an attack on press freedom. “Whether or not the bullet fired at the radio station’s vehicle was meant to just scare commentator Allan Sison, or to do away with him, the act, by any language, is a direct assault on media,” said the Pangasinan Tri-Media Association.