The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) swiftly condemned the reported abduction and murder today of members of a political clan in Mindanao, including two lawyers and more than a dozen journalists who were accompanying them on the way to the Commission on Elections office to file a certificate of candidacy for the post of provincial governor of Maguindanao.

Updates as of 8:45 pm Monday:

  • Death toll has reached 36 and may even go up to 43.
  • The NUJP and the Freedom Fund for Filipino Journalists will hold a press conference Tuesday.
  • The suspected mastermind and perpetrators, the Ampatuans, are said to be close to President Arroyo
  • Activist group Bayan has challenged Arroyo not to make her friendship with Ampatuans a stumbling block to probe

Military spokesperson Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner confirmed on ABS-CBN’s TV Patrol newscast that soldiers have recovered 21 dead bodies recovered, consisting of 13 females and 8 males. But Brawner added that the bodies have not been positively identified.

Brawner also said that military authorities have ordered more troops and armed personnel carriers to help restore peace and order in Maguindanao where the incident happened.

The incident has been described as the single worst attack against a group of working journalists in the country’s history.

In a statement, the NUJP said that “taking hostage someone about to file a certificate of candidacy is, by itself, a brazen challenge to efforts to strengthen our admittedly fragile democracy. And, if true that a local government official and a police officer are involved, then it says a lot about how far government has gone to eradicate the warlord politics that continues to reign over many of our provinces, very often the poorest and most underdeveloped.”

“To take hostage journalists who were merely going about their job of informing the public worsens the already heinous crime and elevates it into an assault on the Constitution itself and the freedom of the press and of expression it enshrines, and the people’s right to know which these freedoms serve,” said the journalists’ group.

The NUJP, which is actively campaigning against acts of violence directed at working journalists, called on government to “move swiftly to resolve this crisis and ensure that no harm befalls the hostages and, if true that violence has been inflicted on some of the hostages, to ensure swift justice on the perpetrators, no matter who they are”.

Among those reportedly abducted at gunpoint were two lawyers, Cynthia Joquindo and Connie Bresuela, both members of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL).

The incident reportedly occurred just around five kilometers from the Commission on Elections office, and journalists have been prevented or discouraged from going there in the aftermath of the incident.