SENATE leaders strongly denounced the unwarranted arrests of members of mediamen who covered the Peninsula Hotel standoff Thursday amid widespread outrage over the blatant violation of constitutional guarantees on freedom of the press.

President Arroyo, apparently reacting to the adverse reaction to the televised spectacle of hundreds of mediamen being hauled off in buses for questioning, directed National Police Chief Gen. Avelino Razon Jr. to speed up the release of media members who were detained in connection with the Peninsula standoff.

“They should be immediately released once there is no more reason for them to be detained by the police,” the President said.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., however, protested the Arroyo government’s treatment of media as “worse than the way media covering the war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are being treated.”

“It is a calculated move to intimidate media to toe the government line,” Pimentel added.

This developed as the Senate, at the insistence of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, continued marathon floor debates on the 2008 budget bill despite a request from Pimentel to temporarily suspend proceedings in the face of the Peninsula Hotel incident in Makati.

Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. reminded police authorities to respect the rights of media who, he said, were merely doing their job in covering the Makati incident involving Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV.

Villar blasted the “unreasonable and rough treatment” accorded to the media members carrying out their duties and risking their lives in covering the Makati incident.

He added that this conduct “clearly violates the rights of media practitioners and makes mockery of the implementation of our laws. Due respect must be given to the least of our people, much more to journalists in the line of duty.”

Villar insisted that those responsible for the violations committed against legitimate journalists “must be disciplined and penalized.”

“We deplore the manner in which legitimate media practitioners and journalists have been rounded up,” Senate Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan told BusinessMirror.

In a separate statement, Sen. Mar Roxas II warned authorities against taking custody of mediamen and any of their videos or photographs without due process. “This is a clear violation of press freedom. Let the press do its job of covering events without fear or favor and putting out the unvarnished truth.”

SENATE leaders strongly denounced the unwarranted arrests of members of mediamen who covered the Peninsula Hotel standoff Thursday amid widespread outrage over the blatant violation of constitutional guarantees on freedom of the press.

AKBAYAN party-list condemned the arrest and rounding up of journalists and civil society leaders and warned the government last night against using the Manila Peninsula standoff to launch another crackdown on the opposition, saying it should instead face squarely the issues that led to the standoff.

THE P1.23-trillion budget bill submitted by Malacańang to Congress was based on a “bloated” exchange rate, saddling the government with a P20- billion overpayment of foreign loans incurred by the government, according to Sen. Francis Escudero.

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Huge waves caused by strong winds swept away or severely damaged the homes of close to 8,000 people residing along the shorelines of this city’s west coast as well as public infrastructure, and the homeless are now housed in several evacuation centers or with relatives.

DAVAO CITY—Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., Armed Forces chief of staff, on Wednesday assailed the report of a United Nations (UN) special rapporteur that he was convinced by the claim of the military that most of the extrajudicial killings of left-wing activists were touched off by internal purges in the ranks of the communist movement.

A LAWMAKER on Thursday called on the government to stop the planned sale of the National Transmission Corp. (Transco) pending review of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira).