Incident

Second Filipino journalist killed within week

Cause of death

Shooting

Details

Police said two still unidentified men gunned down Teodoro Escanilla, 56, more popularly known as “Tio Todoy,” while entertaining a visitor inside his house in a village in the town of Barcelona, Sorsogon late on Wednesday night.
His colleagues said Escanilla hosted a programme called “Pamana ng Lahi “ (Heritage of Race) over a local radio station and also served as the provincial spokesman of the human rights group “Karapatan” (Rights) in Sorsogon.
Based on the testimony of his wife, police said Escanilla was entertaining a visitor inside their house late on Wednesday night when the two assailants suddenly appeared, fired at him several times and killed him on the spot.
The assailants immediately fled on board a motorcycle, police said, adding they have yet to determine whether the killing was work-related” as a broadcast journalist or because he was the spokesman of a human rights group in the province.
Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma denounced the killing, saying in a statement from Malacanang Palace: “We condemn the killing Teodoro Escanilla.
We will hunt down the suspects and they will be put to trial.”
Local media organisations noted the killing of Escanilla was the second in a week and also came a day after the murder of Gregorio Ybanes, the publisher of a local newspaper called 
Kabuhayan (Livelihood) News Service, in Tagum City and the president of the Davao del Norte Press and Radio-TV Club in restive Mindanao on Tuesday night.
Ybanes was also a board member of the Davao del Norte Electric Co-operative which has been embroiled in a “power struggle” among the officers, according to the police.
Police said Ybanes was the second journalist to be slain in Tagum City, the first being Rogelio Butalid, a broadcast journalist who was shot dead in December 2019. Foreign and local media organisations have considered the Philippines as one of the most dangerous places in the world where journalists could practise their profession along with war-torn Iraq and Syria in the Middle East and Afghanistan in Asia.