CLARK FREEPORT – An out-of-court agreement was reportedly signed by relatives or heirs of 14 journalists killed in the Ampatuan massacre with an emissary of the accused to negotiate a settlement for P50 million.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) broke the news as the story was exposed by Vera Files in its website on Monday.
Reacting to the report, NUJP Chairperson Rowena Paraan said: “We have an environment that encourages the victims to settle. If the victims feel they will get justice, the temptation to settle will not be there.”
NUJP Director Fred Villareal also made a reaction saying that “the slow pace of justice and the dire economic conditions of some of the relatives of the victims could have forced them to sign the agreement.”
The Vera Files report identified the Ampatuan emissary as a certain Jun Chan. However, no settlement has been reached to date because Chan was killed in an ambush en route to his farm in Barangay Sulit in General Santos City a month after the agreement was signed.
The Vera Files report said the agreement with Chan was reached the third week of February, and Chan was killed on March 25.
“But the proposed settlement surfaced only recently when an heir of one of the victims decided to provide the details to highlight how precarious their situation is—financially and security-wise—as victims living in Mindanao,” the report said.
The Vera Files source said “the meetings were held in a mosque in General Santos on the second and third weeks of February” and “Chan was accompanied by a man they called Prof.”
The report said in the first meeting, Chan asked the heirs to sign a document authorizing him to negotiate a financial settlement on their behalf in return for 15 percent of the amount.
“We said we would not entertain any offer lower than P50 million, and the emissary said he would talk to his principal,” according to the source.
In the second meeting, Chan told the heirs that his principal was amenable to the amount but asked for two affidavits in return, the source said.
One would be an affidavit of desistance. The other would be an affidavit stating that then gubernatorial candidate Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu had promised each journalist P30,000 as payment for accompanying his wife Genalyn to the Commission on Elections office in Shariff Aguak to file his certificate of candidacy (COC).
