Quiapo vendors ‘surrender’ massacre DVDs to authorities

It could hardly be called a raid. But on Monday, close to 10 members of the Optical Media Board (OMB), including no less than its chair, shook down stalls in Manila’s Quiapo district reportedly selling DVD copies of footage taken from the site of the gruesome massacre in Maguindanao following its discovery. There was just one problem. No arrests could be made, since apparently, there were no violations of pertinent rules. “They (DVD sellers) voluntarily surrendered the DVDs and these do not fall (under) pornographic materials and these are not considered pirated because they were not copied from an (original) source," admitted National Press Club president Benny Antiporda, who accompanied OMB chair Ronnie Ricketts in the “raid." The visit to Arlegui Street in Quiapo came after some of the families of the massacre victims claimed that the DVDs proliferating in Quiapo, and even in Mindanao, aggravated the pain they suffer for the loss of their loved ones. The DVDs reportedly show the mangled bodies of the victims as well as the site of the November 23 massacre in Maguindanao, where 57 people including at least 31 journalists died. According to a GMA News report, no actual vendor was caught selling the DVDs but an OMB asset retrieved a box of the said DVDs, each reportedly being sold at P50. A total of about 600 DVDs were surrendered by vendors in the raid.
For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV National Union of Journalists of the Philippines vice chair Nonoy Espina, while saying that the “raid" is not central to the campaign for justice for the massacre victims, believes that the issue touches on the involved people’s sense of propriety. “(The massacre) was horrible enough. Why should it be sold?... It’s painful for the families (of the victims) that people are making money out of it," Espina said in a separate interview. Espina added that authorities should now investigate how the vendors got hold of the footage taken from the massacre site. “Obviously the original material would have come from the authorities who were there," Espina said. An earlier GMA newscast disclosed that the same DVDs were being clandestinely sold in the southern Mindanao cities of General Santos and Cotabato. Running for about two hours, the DVD contains video footage of the November 24 and 25 police operations to retrieve the victims’ bodies. When it first came out on November 26, the DVD reportedly cost P350 each in General Santos, until the price went down to P150 but still negotiable. In Cotabato, the DVD was being sold at P35 each. Local police had earlier said it is unlikely that the original footage came from their members, but they would nevertheless look into possible cases that could be filed against the vendors. – Jerrie M. Abella/JV, GMANews.TV