His Excellency Ambassador Sung Kim Ambassador United States of America Manila 8 June 2020
Your excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists for press freedom, requests your intervention in the case of Maria Ressa, a member of the IPI Executive Board and a leading journalist who founded the news website Rappler.
As you must be aware, Ms. Ressa, a dual citizen of the United States and the Philippines, is an internationally acclaimed journalist who has been repeatedly targeted by the Philippine government for her courage and resolve to uphold press freedom and speak truth to power. Her website has been critical of President Rodrigo Duterte and has written extensively about the war on drugs and state- condoned extrajudicial killings.
Ms. Ressa’s journalism has been acknowledged and hailed around the world. In 2018 she was one of four journalists named Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’ for taking “great risks in pursuit of greater truth.” That same year Rappler received the IPI-IMS Free Media Pioneer Award.
As a result, the government has filed as many as 9 cases against Ms. Ressa in a blatant attempt to silence her and shut down Rappler. These legal cases, which are only aimed at criminalizing her reporting and carry combined sentences of more than 100 years in prison, include two libel prosecutions, two criminal cases alleging foreign ownership in Rappler and investigations of old tax returns.
In one of the cyber libel cases a judgement is expected to be delivered by the Manila Regional Trial Court on June 15. The case is clearly based on trumped up indictments, in which the law has been applied retroactively to charge and intimidate Ms. Ressa.
The cyber libel case is based on an investigative report that Rappler published on 29 May 2012 claiming that former chief justice Renato Corona had used a vehicle registered under the name of businessman Wilfredo Keng, who had alleged links to illegal drugs and human trafficking rings. Four months after the publication of the story, in September the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 was signed into law.
The businessman mentioned in the Rappler report, Mr. Keng, filed a libel complaint with the National Bureau of Investigation's (NBI) cybercrime division in October 2017 against Ms. Ressa and senior Rappler reporter Reynaldo Santos. He claimed that “the article was published by Rappler without observing the ethical standards of journalism. It contained malicious imputations of crimes, with bad intentions, purposely to malign, dishonour and discredit my character and good reputation.”
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In February 2018, the NBI’s cybercrime division decided not to proceed with the complaint. However, Mr. Keng filed another affidavit a few days later and in March 2018 the NBI decided to prosecute Ms. Ressa and Mr. Santos applying the law retrospectively against the spirit of justice. Ms. Ressa was arrested on 13 February 2019 and had to spend time in detention before being released on bail.
The U.S. Senate held that the persecution of Ms. Ressa and Rappler is widely viewed as part of a pattern of “weaponizing the rule of law” to repress independent media in the Philippines. The Senate passed a resolution in December 2019 in which it “condemns... the harassment, arrest, and unjustified judicial proceedings against the media and journalists, in particular, the proceeding against Rappler and Maria Ressa” and “urges the Government of the Philippines to guarantee the right to the freedom of the press, and to drop all the charges against Maria Ressa and Rappler.”
U.S. Senator Schatz called the charges against Ms. Ressa “trumped-up” and added that the Filipino government should stop “trying to silence journalists who are accurately reporting the news.” And Senator Cardin referred to the indictment of Ms. Ressa as “part of [President Duterte’s] crackdown on free speech and dissent.”
Your excellency, it is abundantly clear that the case is politically motivated. We urge you to use the power of your offices to come out strongly against the continued legal harassment of Ms. Ressa. A statement from the United States government and the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines at this critical juncture will go a long way in upholding the two democratic pillars of the rule of law and press freedom, both in the Philippines and around the world.
Yours Sincerely
Barbara Trionfi Executive Director
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