.bmp)
.bmp)
MANILA-A television news team from the Philippines’s largest network including one of the country’s best-known journalists was believed to have been abducted by members of the militant group Abu Sayyaf, officials said Tuesday.The journalist, Ces Drilon, a senior reporter for ABS-CBN, was with her cameraman and driver when they were intercepted on Sunday by armed men in Sulu, a province in the south where Abu Sayyaf, which is fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines, and other Islamic extremists are known to operate, the police said.Also with the crew was Octavio Dinampo, a professor at Mindanao State University who, according to the police, accompanied the news team on their way to meet with members of Abu Sayyaf.Abu Sayyaf is notorious for its kidnap-for-ransom activities and has victimized not only Filipinos but foreigners as well. The militants have been blamed for several major terrorist attacks across the Philippines in recent years and are the target of a sustained military campaign being supported by the United States.Although United States and Philippine officials say this campaign has considerably weakened the group during the past five years, analysts say the militants remain a high security threat.Chief Superintendent Joel Goltiao, the chief of police in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, to which Sulu belongs, said Tuesday that the police had sent “feelers” to Abu Sayyaf in an attempt at negotiation “but the abductors have not yet said anything,” he said, according to The Associated Press.Mr. Goltiao told reporters Tuesday the television crew was abducted in a remote village on the island of Jolo by a group led by Albader Parad, a known Abu Sayyaf leader.Lorelie Fajardo, a spokesperson for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, said the kidnapping could raise questions about the authorities’ control of the security situation."This can give a bad signal because Ms. Drilon is a very popular figure in the country,” she said.She said the president had already ordered the police to do its best to locate the four abductees.ABS-CBN, in a short statement on Tuesday, confirmed that its crew was missing but stopped short of calling it a kidnapping. “All efforts are underway to find them and bring them home,” the network said.The feared abduction once again highlighted the security problems Filipino journalists face. According to local and international media groups, the Philippines, where dozens of journalists have been murdered in recent years, is among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists.“It is great cause for concern that this volatile southern region of the Philippines remains insecure for the press, and we call on local authorities to work diligently to secure their safe and swift release,” said Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who is based in New York.This would not be the first time that journalists pursuing a story about Abu Sayyaf had been kidnapped by their subjects. In 2000, the militants seized 16 local and foreign journalists — 2 of them from ABS-CBN — who were covering the kidnapping of 21 people from a Malaysian resort.As in the days of Noah....
