It was the single deadliest event for the press since 1992, when the Committee to Protect Journalists began keeping detailed records on journalist deaths.
On November 23, 2009, 57 people - 32 of them journalists or media workers - were killed in the Southern Philippines as they traveled in Maguindanao province with a convoy intending to file gubernatorial candidacy papers for a local candidate. After the journalists were gunned down, their killers brought in backhoes and bulldozers in an effort to bury the dead in a mass hillside grave.
Now, nine months later, the opening trial date for 17 men accused of these murders and other crimes has been set for September 1st. Serious questions remain, however, about whether the people who ordered the killings - not just the triggermen -- will ever be brought to justice. Their identities are known. The political clan behind the killings were provincial political allies of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Her administration quickly denounced the killings.
In January this year, a new president was elected. Benigno Aquino is the son of former President Cory Aquino, the woman who brought the country back to democracy after decades of dictatorship under Ferdinand Marcos. President Aquino has pledged to bring all the killers to justice; no matter how highly politically connected they may be Journalists in provincial Philippines have been killed with shocking regularity. Typically, they are gunned down by two men on a motorcycle, as they make their way to work, or drop off their children at school, or meet a source for lunch.
Since 2000, 32 journalists, other than those who died in Maguindanao, have been killed and in only five of the cases has there been even partial justice. The shooters, often contract killers who had no personal contact with their target, have been tried and found guilty. However, in none of the cases have the more politically well connected men who paid them and ordered the executions have ever been tried, let alone found guilty.
Convictions of the killers of journalists in the Philippines are so rare that CPJ's Impunity Index, which measures the rate of successful prosecutions, ranks the country third worst, behind only Iraq and Somalia.
The larger question now is: will President Aquino be able to reverse this trend? Does he have the political power or the will to challenge the provincial political structure of a poor country like the Philippines, which is saddled with a faltering court system and a heritage of privilege evolved over several hundred years of colonial rule by Spain, and then the United States?
It's a welcome sign that the November 23rd killers are beginning to be brought to justice. The Secretary of the Philippines' Justice Department, Leila de Lima, has called the trial a "litmus test" for the country's judicial system, according to press reports. Nearly 200 people face charges in all.
But this prosecution has come to represent larger questions. Can the Philippines end the reign of terror against journalists? Can they safely do their critically important work - maintaining the balance of power between a government and its people? Can the Philippines' criminal justice system actually work?
President Aquino's mother, Cory, came to power in 1986. The hopes for the widespread reform that she brought with her have never been met. More than 25 years after the end of the Marcos dictatorship and four succeeding presidencies, the Philippines, once the Pearl of the Orient, continues to fall short of expectations. The Maguindanao "litmus test" will really be a report not just on the state of the nation's judiciary, but a frank indicator of the country's future.
By Bob Dietz, Committee to Protect Journalists Asia Program Coordinator.