JOURNALIST CRITIC OF DUTERTE CONVICTED OF CYBERLIBEL, GETS 6 YEARS

High-profile Philippine journalist Maria Ressa was convicted Monday in a cyber libel case that press freedom advocates have branded a ploy to silence critics of President Rodrigo Duterte, the Agence France Presse (AFP) reported on June 15, 2020.

Ressa, 56, and her news site Rappler have been the target of legal action and probes after publishing stories critical of Duterte's policies, including his drug war that has killed thousands. She was allowed to remain free on bail after the verdict pending a possible appeal of the conviction, which carried a sentence of up to six years. After handing down the verdict, Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa said freedom of the press could not be used as a “shield,” Reuters reported.

"We are going to stand up against any kind of attacks against press freedom," Ressa told journalists after the conviction in Manila. Monday's verdict decided a trial that stemmed from a businessman's 2017 complaint over a Rappler story five years earlier about his alleged ties to a then-judge on the nation's top court. Ressa, who Time magazine named as a Person of the Year in 2018, did not write the article and government investigators initially dismissed the businessman's allegation but refilled it under controversial cyber crime statute aimed at online offences such as stalking and child pornography. The law they are accused of violating took effect in September 2012, months after the article was published, and prosecutors said Rappler's typographical correction to the story in 2014 to change "evation" to "evasion" was a substantial modification and the article was thus covered by the law.

The human rights alliance Karapatan condemned the conviction of Ressa along with the six-member Makabayan bloc at the House of Representatives, said Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate. #IStandWithMariaRessa