Gunmen kill newspaper editor in Philippine south

Manila, Feb 19: Gunmen wearing baseball caps shot and killed an editor of a community newspaper today in the troubled southern Philippines, police said, a day after a team of UN rights investigators visited the region.

Hernani Pastolero, 64, editor of the weekly paper ''Lightning Courier'' was sipping coffee in front of his house in Sultan Kudarat town on Mindanao island when gunmen shot him twice in the back of his head today morning.

''He was killed instantly,'' said Ismael Mama, the town's chief of police. ''We're still trying to establish the motive for the killing because Pastolero was not known to be a very hard-hitting journalist. We're trying to establish if he had some enemies.'' The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) condemned Pastolero's murder, describing it as the ''latest atrocity against the Philippine media''.

''This is again proof of how official inaction has bred a culture of impunity and emboldened those who seek to stifle freedom of the press and of expression in this country,'' said Jose Torres Jr., the union's chairman.

Torres said Pastolero was the first journalist killed this year and the 49th since 2001 when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power. He said the Philippines was the second most dangerous place for journalists, behind Iraq, in 2006.

Only a handful of the killings have been solved, including the conviction of two police officers for the killings of two journalists on Mindanao.

Yesterday, Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings, and his team met dozens of families of human rights victims in Davao City on of Mindanao.

Arroyo has invited the United Nations and some European states to help her government investigate the political killings after rights groups and families of victims declined to cooperate with a government panel created to look into the murders.

Local rights group has claimed more than 800 people have been murdered since 2001, but security officials said only 136 had been documented, blaming communist rebels for about 20 of these cases and admitting only six cases involving troops.

Alston was expected to end his 10-day mission in Manila this week. He has avoided the media and kept details of his meetings with rights groups and families of the victims secret.

Reuters