When a press pass and a media identification card no longer guarantee a journalist’s safety and state authorities respond to peaceful protests with needless violence and imprisonment, freedom and democracy can only tremble in fear.
Five journalists along with 14 other workers and supporters were arrested on Monday after the walls of the NutriAsia factory once again saw a brutal and violent dispersal of picketers demanding for the reinstatement of dismissed employees.
According to a report from Bulatlat, mass was ongoing when the police started pushing the workers with their shields, hitting them with rattan sticks, and bombarding them with rocks.
Among the five journalists covering the protests were Jon Bonifacio and Psalty Caluza, student-journalists from the University of the Philippines, Diliman.
The Meycauayan police claimed that they recovered guns and illegal drugs from the arrested individuals — an accusation following the suspicious pattern set by the uniformed men responsible for the extrajudicial killings of the bloody Oplan Tokhang.
The arrest of the reporters is a clear manifestation of the state’s disregard of and attack against press freedom in the Philippines. Much like how the protesters were continuously deprived of their rights to regularization and more humane working conditions by the NutriAsia management, the journalists who were present to cover the event and expose the truth to the people were also deprived of their rights to a freely cover the event by the state authorities.
It goes to show how companies like NutriAsia can hold the capital, power, and influence to limit the Filipino people’s constitutional rights to peaceful assembly and a free press, two of the principal pillars of a free and democratic society.
The UP Journalism Club strongly condemns the violent dispersal of the picketers as well as the arrest of the journalists outside the NutriAsia factory. This is a blatant attempt to silence those who are being robbed of their rights and those who try to speak for them.
We are one with the fight against contractualization and the defending of press freedom.
#DefendPressFreedom
#EndContractualization
#BoycottNutriAsia
