Ampatuan

10 results arranged by date

Philippines makes premature claim to end of impunity in journalist murders

When the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural classified the 2009 Maguindanao massacre — the deadliest attack on the press ever recorded by CPJ — as “resolved,” Philippine authorities were quick to echo and tout this designation.  Too quick, as it turned out. UNESCO’s then-assistant director-general for communication and information, Moez Chackchouk, made the official…

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A relative of one of the Maguindanao massacre victims addresses the crowd during a rally to call for justice in Quezon city, on December 18, 2019. A Philippines court today issued its verdict on the 2009 attack, in which 58 people, including 32 journalists and media workers, were killed. (AP/Aaron Favila)

Ten years for justice in Maguindanao case is too long: We can do better

Never Forget. This became the rallying cry among journalists, freedom of expression activists and human rights defenders as they demanded justice following the massacre on November 23, 2009 of 58 people in Maguindanao. The attack, in which 32 journalists and media workers were killed, was the single deadliest event for the press that CPJ has…

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Maguindanao five years on

November 23 will mark five years since the Maguindanao massacre, the single deadliest event for the press since the Committee to Protect Journalists began keeping records in 1992.

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Philippines’ Aquino demonstrates selective political will

Some weeks ago, the body of Esmail Amil Enog was found. The corpse had been chopped to pieces and then thrown together in a sack. Enog was a witness in a grisly massacre in November 2009, which took the lives of 57 people, 32 of them journalists, on a stretch of lonely highway in the…

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Third witness to Maguindanao massacre killed

The climate of impunity that fostered the November 23, 2009, massacre of 57 people, including 32 journalists, is alive and well not only on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, where the massacre took place, but in all of the country. The revelation that the brutalized body of a key witness to the killings, Esmail…

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Former Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr., head of the Ampatuan clan, is a suspect in the Maguindanao massacre. (Reuters/Joseph Agcaoili)

Philippine court bids to gag massacre trial scrutiny

Bangkok, May 12, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned by an appeals court resolution in the Philippines that threatens to curb outside scrutiny of legal proceedings against suspects in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre, in which 32 journalists and media practitioners were systematically shot and murdered. 

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Zaldy Ampatuan (AP)

Accused Maguindanao mastermind may go free

New York, March 8, 2011–The Committee to Protect Journalists is worried that a special five-judge panel named by the Philippines Court of Appeal in Manila will free the suspected mastermind behind the Maguindanao massacre, or release him on a technicality. Lawyers for Zaldy Ampatuan, the former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, have…

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Members of CPJ's delegation to the Philippines can be seen here in a video still on the killing grounds where 57 people lost their lives in the Maguindano massacre.

CPJ’s Press Freedom Awards remember Maguindanao

November 23 marked both an evening of celebration of the courageous and remembrance of the slain: CPJ’s annual International Press Freedom Awards fell on the exact one-year anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines, the deadliest attack on the press ever recorded in CPJ history.

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Andal Ampatuan Jr., a defendant in the killings, is taken to court in Manila. (Reuters/Roi Azure)

Justice takes twisting turns in Philippines massacre

An apparent injustice has been reversed—Philippines Justice Secretary Alberto Agra refiled murder charges against two key figures in the November 2009 mass killing of journalists and others in Maguindanao. On April 19, we filed an alert expressing our dismay that Agra had dropped murder charges against Zaldy Ampatuan, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and his uncle, Akmad…

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Former Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr., head of the Ampatuan clan, is a suspect in the Maguindanao massacre. (Reuters/Joseph Agcaoili)

Concern as some charges dropped in Philippines killings

New York, April 19, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists is dismayed by the Philippine government’s decision to drop murder charges against Zaldy Ampatuan, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and his uncle, Akmad Ampatuan, former mayor of Mamasapano on the southern island of Mindanao. The move, announced in Manila on Saturday, overruled the Quezon City…

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