Labeled for Death?
For contradicting the military?s propaganda against the New People?s Army, a hard-hitting Kidapawan journalist is being vilified by the army as a communist, thus putting her life in grave danger.
By Carlos H . Conde
davaotoday.com
DAVAO CITY ? Malu Manar is no stranger to death threats. As a journalist who works and lives in Central Mindanao, where rebels, bandits and warlords are aplenty, she is bound to step on some toes every once in a while.
She had worked for the Catholic-ran DXND in Cotabato City since the early 1990s but moved to a sister radio station in Kidapawan City a few years ago after her family received death threats. She had been very critical of some local officials in her radio program and she believed that had something to do with the threats.
?When some men went looking for my two daughters at their school, that was it,” Manar told Reuters last year. At one point, she started disguising herself, wearing a wig and sunglasses to avoid the people stalking her.
“It was difficult and painful. It was a traumatic experience for my family. Even now, I have not really lowered my guard. I still play hide-and-seek,” she said.
But all the years she spent on the frontlines of Mindanao — reporting for DXND and filing dispatches for such newspapers as Manila Times, Today, Manila Bulletin and the online news site MindaNews ? didn?t prepare her for what happened one day in May.