MANILA (UCAN): Radio journalist, Maria Vilma Rodriguez, was gunned down near her home of Tumaga, Zamboanga City, Mindanao, the Philippines at around 8:00pm on October 22.
The 56-year-old single mother of four children and radio anchor with 105.9 E-Media Production Network, was shot three times in the abdomen by a gunman arrived on a motorcycle at the store where Rodriguez was spending time with her sister, mother, and nephew.
Rodriguez managed to walk towards her home, just a few metres away, and tell one of her daughters what happened, according to Julie Alipala, another Zamboanga-based journalist.
She was rushed to the Zamboanga City Medical Centre where she died at around 9:37pm.
Rodriguez became the fifth journalist to be killed since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. came to power in June 2022, according to media groups.
The Zamboanga unit of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines [NUJP] condemned the killing and called for a thorough probe.
We don’t need another unsolved case that might end up as another statistic on a growing list of victims
National Union of Journalists of the Philippines
“We don’t need another unsolved case that might end up as another statistic on a growing list of victims,” the union said in a statement on October 22.
E-Media’s executive, Rey Bayoging, told the NUJP that Rodriguez had worked with the company for nearly a year, remarking that her radio programme—Barangay [village] Action Centre—“was not a hard-hitting one.”
The radio and television company called on police to quickly catch the killer. “Why is it so easy to bring in guns to this city and kill people?” Bayoging asked.
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According to the NUJP, Rodriguez is the second female journalist to be killed in Zamboanga since Gloria Martin in 1992.
After Marcos Jr. came to power, radio reporter, Rey Blanco, was stabbed to death on Negros Island in September 2022, followed by the shooting of broadcaster, Percival Mabasa, by motorcycle-riding gunmen in October in the capital Manila.
In May 2023, broadcaster, Crecenciano Bunduquin, was killed in Calapan City in Oriental Mindoro.
In November 2023, radio broadcaster, Juan Jumalon, was killed during a live broadcast by a lone gunman who pretended to be a listener in the victim’s home-based radio station in Misamis Occidental.
In a February report, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Philippines “remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists,” with 117 journalists killed there in the last 30 years with 81 unsolved cases.
