The Long Road to Justice
By Mark Merueñas
AS SOON as you enter the high-walled compound of the Quezon City Jail Annex in Taguig City where the Ampatuan multiple murder case is being heard, everyone becomes equal—well, almost.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the justice secretary, the high-profile lawyer that defended a former president from plunder charges, or a reporter from some foreign media company.
Pass through the strict security detail that greets you at the gates, and prepare to be stripped of everything essential in your line of work, especially when you’re a journalist—including mobile phones, audio recorders, video and still cameras, and laptops. By the time you reach the courtroom itself, you would have already been frisked twice.
The multiple murder case in which the Ampatuans—an influential and notorious clan in southern Philippines—have been implicated is so shocking, the Quezon City court hearing the case was apparently left with no choice but to restrict live coverage of the proceedings lest they turn into a trial by publicity, as well as disallow the bringing in of digital devices.
For print reporters, the strict policy seemed acceptable: It was simply a matter of relearning the use of the pen and paper as the main tools of the profession.
Those who balked at the restriction the most were from the broadcast media, where, because news reports have to be accompanied either by video or sound bites, technology is absolutely necessary.
For online reporters like me, whose life depends on mobile phones or laptops to break the news, not having my gadgets within my arms’ reach also proved to be tricky. I eventually developed a skill for “sensing” whether it’s the hearing’s “down time”—when not too many important details are being discussed in court—and rushing out to file a breaking story.
Another problem that besets reporting has to do with the sound system that’s been set up to make the proceedings audible inside the relatively large court room. If it’s not working properly, which happens often, we’ve had to sit through the entire hearing leaning as far forward as possible from our designated area in the back of the courtroom just to make out what a witness is saying or the lawyers are arguing about.
I was assigned to cover the trial in its earlier stages, when the proceedings were still being held inside Camp Crame in Quezon City and the judge was still hearing prime suspect Andal Ampatuan Jr.’s bail petition. (Security at the old venue was as tight as at the current one.)
When, due to space limitations and logistical concerns, the hearing was transferred to Camp Bagong Diwa, most defense reporters dropped the “Ampatuan” beat.
Luckily (or unluckily in some respects) for me, I was instructed to follow the case no matter where it went, even if that meant doubling my travel time from home. When the trial resumed in September, I, along with a few other colleagues who stuck to the case, was introduced to new faces—mostly journalists covering Southern Metro Manila beats.
However, at some point, some of our “Bicutan classmates” began complaining about being assigned to the Ampatuan beat. One reporter told me he could hardly keep track of the case because the court hearings were in Quezon City.
It’s the Quezon City beat reporters who get a wind of any petition or motion filed in court; before our Bicutan classmates find out about it, the trial would have already resumed–leaving some of them clueless about what’s being discussed.
Getting the accused to speak to us has also proven difficult, especially when jail guards shield them from prying reporters–unless you’re from the foreign press.
There was this one time after the hearing when we tried approaching the suspects seated on the bench to get their reaction to the proceedings, but the guards wouldn’t let us.
A few moments later, as we were leaving the room, we saw a radio news crew from Germany interviewing the same suspects while the jail guards surrounded them—obviously to keep us away.
In another instance, a defense lawyer was reluctant to grant an interview to the local media, but agreed to be dragged outside the court room for an on-camera interview with a news crew from BBC (the British Broadcasting Company).
“Sa foreign media lang sila nakikipag-usap kasi alam nilang hindi makikita dito sa Pilipinas ang interview nila (They talk only to the foreign media because they know their interview will not air here),” said one reporter, who had failed to interview the lawyer that day.
The fact that the case involves the mass murder of fellow human beings of course resonates among us. At one point the court had to suspend the hearings due to technicalities raised by the defense.
Hoping to get a reaction from the families, I approached the mother of massacre victim Victor Nuñez, Catherine, who was fighting back her tears as she expressed disappointment over the suspension.
Like most of the family members who were attending the trial, she had traveled hundreds of kilometers from Mindanao to Manila only to return home that day without seeing any progress in the trial.
I must admit the sight of the mothers, daughters, and wives weeping while exiting the court room moved me, although, as reporters, we have to distance ourselves from the story and to control our emotions. Those emotions include our very own outrage or frustration over reports that some suspects detained at the facility are getting special treatment, a claim repeatedly denied by the jail warden.
But at the end of the day, everything pays off when we are reminded that after the sweat and long hours, we are helping document one of the most important trials in world history.
But seeing a smile from the usually stern Judge Jocelyn Solis Reyes helps lighten some of the human burden of covering a trial for a massacre as despicable as the Ampatuan carnage.
One year after the ruthless killings, only a handful are being tried while over a hundred are still free, and we are left to conclude—with the image of the victims’ relatives leaving the court room in tears in our heads—that the quest for justice still has a long way to go.
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Mark Merueñas is a news producer for GMANews.TV, the news website of GMA News and Public Affairs. He has been covering the Ampatuan trial since last year.
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