(SEAPA/IFEX) – The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), a founding member of SEAPA, has sounded the alarm over threats made by an alleged illegal logger against one of its reporters. In a 3 February 2005 letter addressed to the person who reportedly threatened PCIJ reporter Luz Rimban, and circulated to members of the Philippine […]
(SEAPA/IFEX) – The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), a founding member of SEAPA, has sounded the alarm over threats made by an alleged illegal logger against one of its reporters.
In a 3 February 2005 letter addressed to the person who reportedly threatened PCIJ reporter Luz Rimban, and circulated to members of the Philippine press and to media advocates worldwide, PCIJ Executive Director Sheila Coronel expressed “outrage” at the attempt to harass a member of the press over a story.
“We cannot take such threats lightly, considering that 10 journalists were killed in the Philippines last year,” Coronel said in her letter to Romeo Roxas, president of the Green Circle Properties & Resources. Green Circle was the subject of a story by Rimban, where it was reported that the company was allegedly involved in anomalous tree-cutting operations.
The investigative piece ran in several Philippine newspapers on 1 February. On the afternoon of that same day, in a phone call to Rimban, a “screaming and ranting” Roxas denied being an illegal logger, but in doing so also made veiled threats against the reporter, Coronel said.
“If you were not a woman, I could do so many things to you,” Roxas was quoted by Coronel as saying. He also added that he “had done dreadful things to others in the past and that [he] had the capacity to do so again,” Coronel noted in her letter.
The PCIJ stressed that Roxas’s denials of involvement in any illegal logging operations were well ventilated in Rimban’s report. He was in fact quoted in the published article as saying, “I am not a logger, I am just clearing my land.”
To protect Rimban, the PCIJ sent a letter of protest to Roxas’s office, and furnished copies of the same to Philippine editors and media advocates such as the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and SEAPA, as well as the Philippine police.
