Tag: press freedom

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Maria Ressa, founder of Filipino independent media site Rappler, found guilty in cyber libel trial

Veteran journalist Maria Ressa, the founder of Filipino independent news site Rappler, was found guilty on Monday of cyber libel charges by a Manila court. She faces up to six years in prison. Critics of the charges, which include prominent human rights and press freedom advocates, say charges filed against Ressa and Reynaldo Santos Jr, a former Rappler researcher and editor, demonstrate how the government is cracking down on media freedom and the independent press in the Philippines.

After Ressa was arrested in February 2019, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement that said Ressa’s treatment “appears to be the latest element in a pattern of intimidation of a media outlet that has fiercely guarded its independence and its right to conduct in-depth investigations and to criticize the authorities.”

Both Ressa and the journalists of Rappler, which was founded in 2012, have written critically about the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, conducting investigations into corruption charges.

Ressa and Santos were arrested in 2019 on cyber libel security charges related to an article published in 2012 that reported on the alleged ties between Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona, who was impeached in 2011, and wealthy businessmen including Wilfredo Keng.

Keng filed the cyber libel complaint against the two journalists in 2017. The five year gap between the article’s publication and Keng’s complaint was much longer than the one-year prescriptive period for ordinary libel in the Philippines’ penal code, and in order to charge Ressa and Santos, the Department of Justice extended that period to 12 years for cyber libel. Rappler’s legal counsel argued this could impact their constitutionally protected rights.

In today’s verdict, issued by Manila Regional Trial Court Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa, Rappler was found to have no liability, but Ressa and Santos were both found guilty and ordered to pay 200,000 pesos (about $3,978 U.S. dollars) in moral damages and another 200,000 pesos fine in exemplary damages. They are entitled to post-conviction bail and an appeal the verdict.

In a statement after the verdict, Amal Clooney, the head of Ressa’s legal defense team, said, “This conviction is an affront to the rule of law, a stark warning to the press, and a blow to democracy in the Philippines. I hope the appeals court will set the record straight in the case.”

Ressa said, “Freedom of the press is the foundation of every single right you hvae as a Filipino citizen. If we can’t hold power to account, we can’t do anything. Are we going to lose freedom of the press? Will it be death by a thousand cuts, or are we going to hold the line so that we protect the rights that are enshrined in our constitution?”

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Report: China clamps down further on dissent as it expels journalists from NYT, WSJ, and WaPo

As China continues to handle the fallout of the novel coronavirus that first originated in Wuhan in Hubei province in early-to-mid December, the Chinese Communist Party announced today that it would rescind the press credentials for certain journalists working at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and would further demand operating details from Time magazine and Voice of America.

Those journalists would be limited from working in China, including in Hong Kong, where mass protests last year fueled by a growing democracy and independence movement has brought increasingly critical global attention onto the Beijing government.

China had previously kicked out three reporters from the Wall Street Journal in mid-February, for what it claimed was an insensitive headline in the newspaper’s opinion pages. The Journal’s opinion section operates outside of its newsroom.

China’s suppression of external dissent is also being mirrored with regard to its own citizens. While there was a bit of an open window for discussion as the government attempted to moderate blowback over its response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, internet censors according to the New York Times are now once again clamping down hard on negative conversations and adding additional reinforcements to police online discussions:

Little is known about the group, formally part of the Cybersecurity Defense Bureau, which has long policed hacking and online fraud. But occasional government releases offer clues. In 2016, the 50-million person region of Guangxi said it had almost 1,200 internet police officers. The goal was to have one internet police officer for every 10,000 people in the region, a sign of the force’s ambitions.

The U.S. and China have been locked in a trade war over the past few years, but the looming global depression has placed ever more acute pressure on a relationship that has frayed since China’s turn toward authoritarianism under President Xi Jinping and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Last week, the U.S. State Department issued its annual human rights report, which particularly singled out China as among the worst offenders globally. In a paragraph that should win an award for semicolon usage, the department wrote that:

Significant human rights issues included: arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture by the government; arbitrary detention by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison and detention conditions; political prisoners; arbitrary interference with privacy; substantial problems with the independence of the judiciary; physical attacks on and criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others as well as their family members; censorship and site blocking; interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, including overly restrictive laws that apply to foreign and domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); severe restrictions of religious freedom; substantial restrictions on freedom of movement (for travel within the country and overseas); refoulement of asylum seekers to North Korea, where they have a well-founded fear of persecution; the inability of citizens to choose their government; corruption; a coercive birth-limitation policy that in some cases included forced sterilization or abortions; trafficking in persons; and severe restrictions on labor rights, including a ban on workers organizing or joining unions of their own choosing; and child labor.

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The cyber libel trial against independent news startup Rappler’s CEO and one of its former writers starts in Manila

The cyber libel trial against Maria Ressa, the CEO and executive editor of independent media startup Rappler, started today in Manila, in a case that will be closely watched because of its implications for press freedom in the Philippines. Also on trial is Reynaldo Santos Jr, a former researcher and writer for the site. If convicted, both potentially face years in jail.

Before co-founding Rappler, Ressa, a Time Magazine Person of the Year for her work exposing corruption and fighting misinformation, served as CNN’s bureau chief in Manila and then Jakarta. Ressa is an outspoken critic of the Philippine’s president, Rodrigo Duterte, and Rappler has often reported critically on Duterte’s administration. In turn, Duterte has accused Rappler of being funded by the CIA and publishing fake news.

Both Ressa and Santos were arrested earlier this year on cyber libel security charges for an article published in 2012 that reported on the alleged ties between Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona, who was impeached in 2011, and wealthy businessmen including Wilfredo Keng. Keng filed the cyber libel complaint against Ressa and Santos in 2017.

The five year gap between the publication of the article and Keng’s complaint is an important issue in the trial, because there is usually only a one-year prescriptive period for ordinary libel in the Philippines’ penal code. In order to charge Ressa and Santos, the Department of Justice extended that period to 12 years for cyber libel, which Rappler counsel J.J. Disini has argued could impact constitutionally-protected rights.

Prior to Ressa’s arrest, Rappler’s registration was revoked by the Philippines’ Securities and Exchange Commission, for allegedly breaking a law that prohibits overseas ownership of media companies, though Rappler said its investors, including Omidyar Network and North Bridge Media, used Philippine Depositary Receipts, which do not give voting rights or board membership and have also been used by other companies like ABS-CBN, the national broadcaster.