In December 2019 the Philippines’ ‘trial of a decade’ ended with a judge handing down life sentences to members of a powerful political clan for their roles in a 2009 massacre in the southern province of Maguindanao. The court’s 761-page decision held more than 40 people responsible for the crime, deemed 15 others accessories, and acquitted 50 of the accused. Since 32 of the 58 victims had been journalists the trial was hailed as a watershed moment for press freedom in a country in which 145 journalists have been killed since the 1990s.
Earlier this week Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 46 showed that the same system can be used for the sort of political harassment that is sometimes called “lawfare.” In order to find the news website Rappler’s CEO Maria Ressa and her former colleague Reynaldo Santos Jr. guilty, the court accepted several unusual arguments. These included the notion that the site had violated a “cyber libel” law retroactively (with a story posted four months before the law even existed), in a suit launched six years after the limitation period had expired; that Rappler’s correction of a spelling error amounted to republication two years after the original posting; and that web postings amount to “continuous publication” which render traditional one-year limitations on libel irrelevant.
The verdict, currently under appeal, can carry a prison sentence of up to seven years. It is the first of eight court cases levelled against Ms Ressa and shows, in the words of a Washington Post editorial, that “Mr. Duterte is succeeding in compromising the Philippines’ justice system, even as he personally flouts the rule of law.” The verdict is another shot across the bows of the independent media in the Philippines, and it comes shortly after the government forced the ABS-CBN media network to shut down critical broadcasts in May and on the heels of a law signed in March – as part of the country’s Covid emergency measures – which allows the government to criminalize the sharing of “false information” with penalties of up to 2 months in prison and a fine of 1 million pesos (US$19,600).
Maria Ressa, a Princeton-educated veteran journalist and former bureau chief of CNN is a dual citizen of the United States and the Philippines. She is a poor choice of target. Having posted bail for trumped-up charges eight times in the last year, she has become practically immune to the threats against her. The troll army Duterte uses to astroturf his policies and intimidate his critics has clearly failed to silence her. Instead it has drawn heightened scrutiny to the president’s appalling human rights record and highlighted his boorish hostility towards the media, whom he calls “spies” and “sons of bitches” and whom his supporters call “presstitutes.”
The Philippines’ National Union of Journalists has called the multiple lawsuits against Rappler and Ressa a “shameless act of persecution by a bully government” and other organizations have supported her throughout her ordeal. So far none of this seems to have deterred president Duterte. What may give him pause, however, is the Trump administration’s willingness to rally around Americans who face legal action abroad. Notwithstanding President Trump’s long record of dismissive and hostile behaviour towards the US media, America still has a historically unique role in defending press freedom around the world.
Last year, four members of Congress urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to raise concerns about Duterte’s “assault on civil society, media freedom, and human rights” during a visit to the Philippines. They noted that he had “made clear his disdain for journalists and even warned that reporters are legitimate targets for assassination.” Earlier this week, a day after Pompeo declared “outrage” at the spying charges brought against Paul Whelan in Russia, the State Department could manage only a single timid sentence for Maria Ressa, calling for a “resolution of the case in a way that reinforces the U.S. and Philippines’ long shared commitment to freedom of expression, including for members of the press.”
Maria Ressa has described her harassment as ‘a cautionary tale’ that the government uses to scare other journalists. So far president Duterte’s tactics have failed to silence her but it is past time that other governments raised their voices on her behalf.