NUJP calls for justice, accountability on media killings worldwide

By Nash Villena, Philippine Canadian Inquirer
November 4, 2025

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) speaks out against media killings across the globe. (File photo)

MANILA, Philippines — The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) released a statement on this year’s commemoration of International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, underscoring the existing culture of impunity amid media killings both domestic and abroad.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, the group expressed its collective call condemning the elusive justice for media worker deaths and the inaction by governments to resolve them.

The group cited the murders of broadcasters Percival Mabasa in 2022 and Gerry Ortega in 2011 as among the infamously unresolved cases of media-related killings in the Philippines, with the alleged masterminds still yet to be convicted.

“We acknowledge that, on government records, their killings and those of other fellow media workers may be considered resolved, but to the journalism community, these cases remain open and cry out for justice,” it wrote.

According to the media group, there have been a total of 202 journalists killed nationwide since 1986.

Meanwhile, NUJP also honored its fellow journalists in the Middle East who lost their lives in the face of daily threats related to their reporting on Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza since October 2023.

“Journalists in the Philippines and elsewhere where the freedom of the press is challenged are no strangers to these tactics and condemn them as an attack on the press and on the people’s right to know,” NUJP wrote.

Qatar-based media outfit Al Jazeera documented more than 270 journalist deaths in the enclave for the past two years; the most recent death was Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi’s, only days after the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire was reached last October.

The United Nations-led commemoration, observed every 2nd day of November, started in 2014 as a day to condemn “all attacks and violence against journalists and media workers.”