Broadcaster shot dead in Dumaguete
Another broadcaster was shot dead in Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental early Thursday morning, Nov. 7, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) reported.
Dindo Generoso was driving his car when he was shot dead by a lone gunman along Hibbard Avenue in Barangay Piapi around 7:30 a.m., the NUJP said citing a spot police report.
“Colleagues said he was on his way to host his program on radio station dyEM 96.7 Bai Radio,” the NUJP Visayas safety office said in its report.
The Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFOMS) said Generoso sustained eight gunshot wounds at different parts of his body that caused instant death.
PTFOMS added there may be more than one killer as “still unidentified perpetrators riding-in-tandem on a black motorcycle” were reportedly seen.
“This dastardly deed will not go unpunished. Whoever is behind this senseless murder will be brought to justice,” PTFOMS executive director Joel Sy Egco said in a statement.
Generoso was the second broadcaster murdered in Dumaguete City since Edmund Sestoso, who died on May 1, 2018, a day after he was shot on his way home from hosting his radio program.
The identity of Generoso’s killer and the motive for his murder was not yet clear, the NUJP said.
“If the murder is work-related, Generoso would be the 14th journalist to be murdered under the Duterte administration and the 187th since 1986,” the group added.
PTFOMS said Generoso was an anchor for development programs of the local government, including a controversial reclamation project that was halted by the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) last week.
Generoso’s murder came 10 days after the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) released its 2019 report last October 29 revealing that the Philippines has the highest number of unsolved journalist murders in the world.
The CPJ’s 2019 Global Impunity Index, which “spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free,” also placed the country, the only one from Southeast Asia on its list, at fifth place while noting that it “has been among the worst five countries nearly every year since the index was first published in 2008.” # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
