One year after: A journalist’s murder

By Aquiles Z. Zonio
A year after the murder of “Tatak News” publisher Christopher Guarin right in front of his wife and daughter in General Santos City, the case remains in the doldrums.
A murder case had already been filed in February last year by the police before the court against the alleged gunman. Marvin Palabrica. But the police have failed to trace the whereabouts of the suspect.
Guarin was gunned down by motorcycle-riding hitmen around 10:30 p.m. on January 5 last year while driving his family home.
He was the first victim of media killings in 2012 and the 150th since democracy was restored in the country in 1986.
 The police are eyeing business rivalry as one of the motives behind the killing.
 Under threat…
 Guarin’s widow, Lyn, said fear continues to haunt them even a year after the murder of her husband.
Lyn bared that she and her children, Christopher Jr. and Alea, rarely stay at home for security reason.
“We rarely stay at home after our neighbors told us there were unidentified motorcycle-riding men who had been asking for our whereabouts,” Lyn said.
The family keeps moving from one place to another to avoid being patterned.
“Sometimes, we sleep at home but with security escorts,” Lyn added.
She said life for them has not been normal since the death of her husband.
According to her, this is a big distraction not only in the schooling of her children but also in her efforts to find a stable means of livelihood.
“I cannot work even if I wanted to. We are only relying on our two-hectare coconut farm and the SSS pension of my late husband,” she said.
Their Tatak newspaper, which used to be a good source of family income, stopped circulating after the death of her husband.
Their financial dilemma exacerbated when Typhoon Pablo damaged almost half of their coconut farm in Mawab town, Compostela Valley. 
She says the scholarship given by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) has been a big help in sustaining the schooling of her children, but not enough since they need to eat, buy clothes, medicines and other basic necessities. What she receives from NUJP monthly is for her children’s schooling.
 She is losing hope that she will find justice for her husband.
 NUJP dismayed…
 Edwin Espejo, NUJP chair-Gensan chapter, expressed dismay over the failure of police authorities to arrest the suspect and identify the mastermind behind Guarin’s killing.
 In a statement, Espejo said “We fear that Guarin’s murder will yet again be relegated to a mere dot in the growing statistics of victims of the culture of impunity that still pervades and haunts the Philippine press.”
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