Having witnessed firsthand how the families and relatives of the victims call for justice opened my eyes to the gravity of what happened 15 years ago and how it has affected multiple generations of the victims’ families.
To recall, 58 persons were killed, of whom 32 were media workers, on November 23, 2009. It was estimated that about a hundred armed men, along with Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., stopped the convoy of Genalyn, the wife of former Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu, who was traveling to Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao, to file the Certificate of Candidacy (COC) for her husband’s gubernatorial bid.
In 2019, Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Regional Trial Court Branch 221 in Quezon City convicted the Ampatuan brothers — Datu Andal Ampatuan Jr. and Zaldy Ampatuan — of 57 counts of murder and sentenced them to reclusion perpetua without parole. Andal Sr., the Ampatuan patriarch, died on July 17, 2015, due to advanced liver cancer.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, no single event has claimed as many journalists in the 18 years they have been compiling detailed records of killed journalists. Prior to this event, the deadliest killings of media personnel occurred in Iraq on October 12, 2006, when 11 employees of Al-Shaabiya television were killed in an attack at the station’s Baghdad studios. RGP
