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The case of journalist Dennis Cuesta, who died Saturday after being shot by gunmen on Aug. 4, illustrates the uselessness of this policy. Senior Superintendent Robert Po, city director of the General Santos City Police Office, reportedly admitted listing Cuesta, program director of a local radio station, as a police "asset" in order to justify issuing him a firearm.
At the time of his death, according to Po, Cuesta was a police witness for the prosecution in a land dispute involving an influential person. While considering the possibility that Cuesta’s murder was related to his work as a broadcast journalist, the police believe his role as witness was more likely the motive for his murder and are focusing their investigation on this angle.
The police director admitted that the department was processing documents that would have allowed Cuesta to legally carry a firearm for his own protection. The police decision to issue him a firearm came after he himself relayed information to the police that he suspected he was the object of covert surveillance by unknown persons. Rather than protecting him, however, the police action put Cuesta's life at risk.
In their handling of this case the police have effectively undermined the functioning of the Department of Justice's Witness Protection Program and exposed the flawed policies on the regulation of firearms within the police force. It means that anyone considered a "police asset" could carry a firearm at the discretion of the police. Whatever criteria or conditions the police may have set in issuing firearms only they know; and to whom these "assets" should be held to account should they commit abuse is not clear.
Cuesta's case exposed the flaws in the system, both in terms of effective prosecution of court cases and of providing police protection to persons facing threats, whether or not they are witnesses. The police authority's failure to take adequate measures put Cuesta’s life at risk, and the police betrayed his family by failing to protect him after they took him as their witness in a court case.
In Cuesta's case, the police should have considered putting him into the Witness Protection Program, especially as he was a journalist and had received death threats.
Enlisting him as a "police asset" and offering him a gun provided no guarantee that he could defend himself. An inexperienced person with a firearm cannot match criminal perpetrators, particularly hirelings, should they carry out a planned attack. Cuesta was shot by motorcycle-riding gunmen; police investigators have said the murder was most likely carried out by hirelings.
Apart from his being a witness, there is also the possibility that Cuesta was targeted because of his broadcasts exposing corruption, gambling and drug-dealing. This does not excuse the police from their failure to afford him adequate protection. The phenomenon of targeted killings of journalists is not new in the Philippines.
In General Santos City, where Cuesta was killed, two journalists have already been murdered. One was Ely Benoya, a friend and colleague of the author – we worked together at a community newspaper in the city in 1999; Benoya was murdered in June 2004.
In fact, the city has been plagued by continuing and unresolved vigilante killings and robberies which began escalating early this year. At least 30 such killings have been documented so far. There has been no substantial progress in the prosecution of these crimes, since no witnesses are willing to come forward. Cuesta's murder thus deepens the fear the people are already experiencing, that anyone who testifies in court could be killed.
Journalists carrying firearms are nothing new in the Philippines. The sad reality is that the country's police force is no longer capable of performing its constitutional obligation to protect the people; but handing guns to potential victims is no solution. The murder of another well-known broadcast journalist, Juan "Jun" Pala of Davao City in 2003, was already a grim lesson that this do-it-yourself protection mechanism does not work. Pala, who was also carrying a firearm, did not escape being targeted for a kill.
There is no rational justification for what has already become a police practice in the name of expediency – asking vulnerable persons to carry firearms and protect themselves. The notion of domestic protection as the responsibility of the state has become negligible. This reveals the degeneration of the state's capability to protect its citizens and to value human lives.
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(Danilo Reyes is a staff member of the Asian Human Rights Commission, a regional human rights NGO in Hong Kong. He is responsible for the organization's work on the Philippines. Previously, he worked as a human rights activist and journalist in the Philippines.)
