MANILA, Philippines — A journalists’ group on Saturday was unmoved by the slight improvement in the country’s ranking on the Global Impunity Index released on Oct. 30, which was now at ninth place compared to last year’s eighth.

The Global Impunity Index, released annually by the New York-based nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), ranks countries based on the number of unsolved murders of media workers in proportion to the total population.

This year’s list examined the killings from Sept. 1, 2014, to Aug. 31, 2024, and countries with five or more unsolved murders were included in the index.

READ: Unesco tracks surge in journalist killings in 2022-23

The Philippines placed ninth with 18 unsolved murders against a population of 117.3 million, while Haiti took first place with seven unsolved killings in comparison to a population of 11.7 million.

CPJ said it was only counting the murders of journalists that, based on its research, were “in direct connection” to their work in the media.

For the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), while it is “easy to take comfort” in the idea that the Philippines was in a better situation than Israel and Haiti, the country was “supposed to be a working democracy where rights, including the freedom of the press and the safety that that freedom requires, are guaranteed by the Constitution.”

“[T]hat is not something that we should be willing to offer to the family of Percy Lapid, or to the family of Doc Gerry Ortega or the families of the 33 media workers killed in the Ampatuan Massacre—which marks its 15th anniversary this year—while justice for those killings remains elusive,” NUJP said.

It reminded the public that the alleged mastermind in the 2022 killing of Percy Lapid, former Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag, was still at large.

Moreover, the families of the victims of the decades-old Maguindanao Massacre have only received “partial justice,” NUJP said after members of the Ampatuan clan who were convicted in the case appealed their convictions.

“Each year that passes risks relegating these murders further into the past and sends the message that attacks against journalists are to be expected and can be expected to be done with impunity,” NUJP said.

“Already, many of our colleagues see these attacks as just part of the territory. While there is inherent risk in journalism and media work, attacks against journalists cannot be normalized,” it added.

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