CEBU CITY (PNA) — Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal Wednesday expressed horror about the carnage that left 47 unarmed people, including at least 30 journalists slaughtered in Maguindanao Province and asked government to lose no time in doing something about the dastardly deed.

“The acts are unheard of, and horrifying,” he said. Among those killed were women, including the wife of Buluan Vice Mayor Datu Ismail “Toto” Mangudadatu.

Vidal also urged political aspirants not to resort to violence and to just focus on presenting their platforms for governance instead.

Media organizations in Cebu have issued separate statements regarding the massacre.

Cebu Citizens-Press Council Executive Director, Pachico A. Seares said, “The press wasn’t targeted, but journalists were there, doing their job, when law and order broke down and respect for human values collapsed.”
Seares, who is also Editor-in-Chief of Sun Star Cebu asked, “What special protection could the press have in that setting? The press, the women — no one was spared.”

The Cebu Federation of Beat Journalists (CFBJ), the umbrella group of Cebu reporters covering various beats, issued a resolution calling the killing of Mindanao-based journalists “barbaric, inhuman and unimaginable in a democratic nation.”

The group asked the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to bring the perpetrators to justice and to ensure that a similar deed would be avoided particularly during the run-up to the elections next year.

A Sun Star Cebu-organized photo exhibit on Mindanao will be held Thursday by the Peace and Conflict Journalism Network (Pecojon).

Sun.Star Chief of Photographers Alex Badayos, who also heads the Cebu news photographers’ group Lens, said all media practitioners attending the affair are invited to wear black in solidarity with journalists from Mindanao who have lost their colleagues.

Antonia Koop, Pecojon’s Germany-based International Coordinator, urged journalists covering the massacre to quickly put out verified and solid information because “people in the world want to know.”

“I know it’s a difficult process to get a real perspective on what happened when the information is contradictory and sources are limited and everybody is pressured to come out,” she added.

Koop is in Cebu City for the launching of the photo-exhibit at the Rotunda 2 on the 2nd floor of the Ayala Center Cebu.