Nobel Laureate Ressa’s Libel Case a Marcos-Duterte Flashpoint
Nobel Laureate Ressa’s Libel Case a Marcos-Duterte Flashpoint
Duterte’s campaign against Ressa, Rappler isn’t dead
One of the ugly vestiges of the six-year reign of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who left office in 2022, is the case hanging fire in the Supreme Court since late 2022 against Rappler editor and Nobel Laureate Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos, who was a researcher on a 2012 investigative report that earned a criminal cyber libel suit based on a law promulgated two years after the story ran. It is also likely an additional point of friction in the growing contest for political primacy, which has included counter-accusations of drug abuse and rumors of a coup plot, between Duterte, who still wants Ressa in jail, and his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who succeeded him in office.
Reporting by Ressa and her online publication became a particular bete noir during Duterte’s presidency, with the government filing 23 individual cases against them along with other forms of harassment before his term ended. The cyber libel case went against Ressa and Santos at the trial and appellate levels, subjecting them to the possibility of seven years in prison, before Duterte left office. It is both a symbol of the kind of presidency that Duterte ran and an opportunity for his successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to demonstrate that his own term in office is built more on the rational rule of law.
Although no date apparently has been given for deliberation, and no arguments are expected to be presented at the high court, three leading international journalism protection organizations have submitted an amicus curiae brief arguing that the convictions not only breach the international obligations of the Philippines “but betray a press freedom legacy the court has reaffirmed for more than a century.” The brief was filed last week by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Center for Journalists in Washington, DC, and the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, joining earlier filings by the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.
Possible change in direction
There have been indications that the Marcos regime is paying attention to international law and pressure although Marcos said, soon after assuming office in 2022, that exercising his executive authority to order the Justice Department to dismiss charges would be “interfering” with the judicial process. “The president wouldn’t dare act on such an issue, which is too sensitive to his powerful predecessor and ally,” said one of his aides. Nonetheless, if a harbinger is necessary, things do seem to happen. Leila de Lima, a highly respected former lawmaker, justice secretary, and chairperson of the Philippines’ Human Rights Commission, was freed by a district court in 2023 after Duterte’s term ended after being arrested in 2017 after criticizing the former president’s murderous drug policies and held on drug charges that rights organizations charged were trumped up for nearly seven years. Duterte was furious that de Lima was freed while Marcos was saying the law had merely run its course.
Also, the Supreme Court, which largely did Duterte’s bidding while he was in office, in May labeled ”red-tagging,” the identifying of individuals or organizations as communists, subversives, or terrorists regardless of their actual political beliefs or affiliations, as a “threat to the right to life, liberty, or security.” Dozens of leftists, human rights campaigners, and defense lawyers have been arrested, harassed, and even killed after being red-tagged.
Duterte’s drug war, which has resulted in an estimated 12,000 (by police) to 30,000 (by human rights NGOs) extrajudicial killings of mostly poor drug users by death squads and police, has continued to fester although Marcos, in an increasingly intense, continuing struggle with Duterte and Duterte’s daughter Sara, his 2022 running mate, has allowed it to slow. In May, as an indication of the Marcos-Duterte 40 police personnel, including seven station commanders, were ordered relieved from their posts in Davao City after Duterte’s son, the mayor, ordered his own murderous drug war. Yesterday, four police officers were also sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for the shooting deaths of two victims at a Manila slum during an anti-drug operation
The feud escalated more yesterday as Vice President Sara Duterte, Duterte’s daughter, on June 19 quit the administration as deputy education secretary. She has been feuding publicly with Marcos’s wife Liza Araneta Marcos.
Marcos is now under pressure to turn Duterte over to the International Criminal Court, from which Duterte withdrew the Philippines in 2019 after the Hague-based tribunal started probing allegations of human rights abuses committed during his drug war. Although Marcos has repeatedly ruled out rejoining the court, the ICC has launched a formal inquiry into the drug crackdown. In 2023, judges at the court gave the green light in late January 2023 to investigate Duterte, a decision that Manila appealed shortly afterward and lost.
Given Duterte’s continuing popularity in the country, it’s unlikely Marcos will turn him over for prosecution. Nonetheless, it gives Marcos – himself the son of one of Asia’s most-discredited and corrupt strongmen who was overthrown and forced to flee in 1987 – both a political problem and an opportunity to exert pressure on Duterte, who is said to control the allegiance of a major segment of the police. In January, defense officials were forced to bat back rumors that Duterte was attempting to agitate active military members for a coup.
The case against Ressa
It now remains to be seen if this relaxation against Duterte’s enemies applies to Maria Ressa and Reynaldo Santos despite the nominally independent Supreme Court. The charges relate to a 2012 investigative story published by Rappler, which in 2012 called attention to allegations that then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona was using a black Suburban SUV with the license plate ZWK111 which was registered to a businessman named Wilfredo Keng. Corona's assigned vehicle, according to the story, was a beige 1996 Toyota Camry. The article cited an intelligence report from an unspecified agency that alleged Keng was tied to illegal activity.
The article predated the Cybercrime Prevention Act, which includes criminal penalties for libel. In February 2014, Rappler corrected a typo in the story, thus technically updating it on the website. More than three years later, in October 2017 after Duterte came into office, Keng filed a complaint with the National Bureau of Investigation, claiming that the correction of the typo constituted republication and could be used as a legal basis to claim the story was covered by the Cybercrime Prevention Act.
The NBI, the Philippines’ top investigative agency, first said the case couldn’t be resuscitated. However, the NBI reversed itself on March 2, 2018, saying the “prescriptive period for crimes falling under…the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 is 15 years." The case named not only Ressa and Santos but seven other Rappler editors and officers. The cyber libel charges were recommended on Jan. 10, 2019, but nobody told Rappler until Feb. 4, three weeks later.
Ressa and Santos face close to seven years in prison if their convictions are upheld.
“Twelve years since the publication of an article that has been woven into a vicious campaign against Maria Ressa, Rappler, and other members of the press, it is clearer than ever that this spurious case intended to silence independent, critical reporting simply does not stand,” said the three press watchdog organizations. “We urge the court to overturn the unjust convictions against Ressa and Santos. This weaponization of the law must come to an end.”
Citing international law and domestic precedent, the brief argues that this case and the Philippine government’s criminalization of defamation are misaligned with current best legal practices and incompatible with international law.
“In short, journalists are unable to do their jobs under the Damocles’ sword of criminal liability,” according to the amicus brief. “They have a duty to satisfy the public interest in being informed of public affairs, and must make daily and expeditious judgment calls about what information to report with an inherently limited set of facts. The prospect of facing criminal liability for allegedly misreporting facts—or worse yet, being punished for accurate reporting—will have a profound chilling effect, discouraging journalists from wading into the sensitive topics that often are the subjects of greatest public concern. This, in turn, undermines the public’s right of access to information and erodes freedom of expression more generally—costs that are hugely disproportionate to the interest the libel charges are ostensibly protecting.”