Columnist gets death threats following ZTE exposé

Columnist Jarius Bondoc of the Philippine Star on Friday sought assistance from the government after receiving death threats allegedly due to his exposé on the controversial $330-million contract for the government’s national broadband network (NBN) project with China’s ZTE Corp. Senior State Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco, head of the presidential task force against media harassment, said Bondoc asked him to look into two text messages that he received Thursday night from the cell phone number +639186929032. Velasco said he has alerted Philippine National Police chief Oscar Calderon and Task Force Usig about the incident and directed them to coordinate with Bondoc for the possible identification of the culprit. "Mr. Bondoc thinks the messages have something to do with his recent columns about alleged shenanigans involving several personalities. Please look into this matter and kindly furnish this office within 10 days your initial investigation report," he told the PNP. Asked if the death threats had something to do with the ZTE deal, Velasco said that it was still too early to tell. "It could be one of the possibilities, but we're not definite yet. We can conduct a back-tracking of the messages sent by this (+639186929032) number," he said. Bondoc earlier claimed in his column that the ZTE deal was sealed following an unnamed election official's trip to China early this year. The official was later identified as poll chief Benjamin Abalos. The first message, received at 10:09 p.m., read: "Bondoc, d k pmunta sa Star! Syang, antay k namin. Di bale sa radio na lang sapul k! Kitakits... bang2!" The second message, received at 10:12 p.m., stated: "Ybang m kc. Wag na u magtngal ng paburol mng kana. Musta mga bta? Si sesmi? Sbog stasyon nyo! Boom. Hahaha" Velasco said that as far as he knows, this was the second time in recent months that Bondoc was harassed over his articles on the alleged ZTE anomaly. Bondoc said in a phone interview that he wanted to tell the sender of the messages that he was merely doing his job as journalist. "Trabaho lang ito. To report on this is just a job." In his column, Bondoc claimed that a high-ranking Comelec official, whose name was withheld, went to China beginning late last year to February this year, courtesy of ZTE. The official allegedly received some $200 million in kickbacks and was even gifted with two Chinese girls for brokering the deal. Shortly after the publication of the article, Abalos admitted that he felt alluded to by Bondoc's articles. However, Abalos admitted that he went to China four times on an invitation to play golf. - GMANews.TV