The editor of an online newspaper in the Philippines has been arrested on charges of cyber-libel as part of what the country’s journalists’ union said was a campaign of intimidation against voices critical of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Speaking from the website’s headquarters on Wednesday before she was taken away by four plainclothes officers, Maria Ressa said she was not intimidated. “These legal acrobatics show how far the government will go to silence journalists, including the pettiness of forcing me to spend the night in jail,” she added.
The charge of cyber-libel, which Ressa denies, was filed by the justice department and the warrant for Ressa’s arrest issued by a Manila court judge on Tuesday. After she was arrested, Ressa was taken to the National Bureau of Investigations, which is under the Department of Justice, where she was to be held overnight.
“The filing of this case is preposterous and baseless,” said Rappler in a statement. “If this is another of several attempts to intimidate us, it will not succeed, as past attempts have shown.”
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines described the arrest as a “shameless act of persecution by a bully government”.
“It is clear this is part of the administration’s obsession to shut Rappler down and intimidate the rest of the independent Philippine media into toeing the line,” the NUJ said in a statement.
The charges against Ressa relate to a story published on Rappler’s website in May 2012 that alleged ties between a Philippine businessman, Wilfredo D Keng, and a high court judge. The controversial cyber-libel law under which she is being prosecuted, was enacted four months after the story was written.
The libel case was first brought in 2017, but initially dismissed by the NBI. It was reopened in 2018.
Ressa’s arrest comes just two months after she turned herself in to authorities over charges of tax evasion at Rappler. Speaking on her release on bail in December, Ressa accused the Philippine government of trying to intimidate and harass journalists and “weaponising the rule of law” against its critics.
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