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A Makati Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge dismissed a class suit filed by journalists and media organizations against government officials who caused the arrest of several dozen journalists covering a press conference by rebel soldiers on Nov. 29, 2007.
The P10-million suit was filed in response to the arrests and other forms of government intimidation that followed the arrests. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) is a co-petitioner in the case.
In a five-page decision, Judge Reynaldo Laigo of Makati RTC Branch 56 claimed that the arrest of the journalists was “justified” and in accordance “with police procedure.”
Laigo also scored the conduct of the journalists present in the Peninsula Hotel incident, which included some of the plaintiffs, when they refused to follow the order of Geary Barias, Police Director of the National Capital Region Police Office, to vacate the area.
“Under the given dangerous situation, that order by defendant …Barias was but lawful and appeared to have been disobeyed by all those, including some of the plaintiffs, when they intentionally refused to leave the hotel premises,” the decision stated.
“(An) appropriate criminal charge under Article 151 of the Revised Penal Code, which is applicable to all, including the media personalities, could have been initiated against them but they were so lucky as none had been initiated against them,” the decision said.
Article 151 of the Revised Penal Code pertains to penalties regarding the “resistance and disobedience to a person in authority or the agents of such person.”
Laigo said the statements issued by government officials following the Peninsula Hotel incident—defending the arrests and warning journalists that the same thing could happen in the future should they refuse to follow police orders—have not violated press freedom.
“(The) pronouncements made by other defendants and that advisory of defendant Secretary Gonzale(z) following that Manila Peninsula Hotel standoff, the same have not and will not in any way curtail much less avert plaintiffs from exercising freely their rights as such members of the press—covering or obtaining information on future events similar to what transpired at the Manila Peninsula Hotel,” the decision said.
The decision was issued June 20, but the lawyers for the plaintiffs received a formal copy last July 1. The decision was first made known when a reporter for a daily newspaper obtained a copy from the office of Barias, who is also a respondent in the complaint.
“The ruling was dated June 20, 2008 but released on the 27th, a Friday, raising the perfectly reasonable suspicion of an attempt to catch the complainants flatfooted and suppress any adverse prompt reaction—in fact, the lawyers of the complainants were not provided with a copy of the ruling. The strategy is no different from getting an arrest warrant issued at the start of the weekend, when the courts close business. It smacks of some conspiracy,” Vergel Santos, editorial board chair of the BusinessWorld and CMFR board member, said.
Harry Roque, the plaintiffs’ counsel, said that the decision “may yet be the biggest blow to our cherished civil liberties to date.”
“(W)e maintain that restricting the movement of the press in such a threatening manner, taking into account the totality of the official acts of the police and the DOJ, constitutes an invisible threat of state retaliation by its police and prosecutorial forces should the press venture into areas that the police declare as a crime scene,” Roque said.
Roque said that the complainants will appeal the case.
The publisher of a daily newspaper critical of the Arroyo government was found guilty of libel last June 5 and sentenced to a minimum of six months to a maximum of two years in prison. She was also ordered to pay P5 million in moral damages and P33,732.25 in civil damages.
Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 59 Judge Winlove Dumayas found Ninez Cacho Olivares, publisher of The Daily Tribune, guilty of libel for a June 23, 2003 article, “Firm’s Partners Ensure Victory of AEDC.” The article alleged that then Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo chose people connected to his own law firm, Carpio Villaraza Cruz (CVC), to handle a complaint by one of its clients against the winning bidder in a controversial build-operate contract for the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal III. Olivares is also the editor in chief of and a columnist for the Tribune.
Olivares’s lawyer Alexis Medina said he is weighing their options on whether to file a motion for reconsideration to Dumayas or an appeal to the Court of Appeals. Olivares has posted bail for her provisional liberty.
CVC claimed in a court affidavit that the article “maligned and blackened the reputation” of the firm by “accusing them of being mere influence peddlers, unlawfully manipulating government institutions for their own ends and using their power against the good of the country.”
Olivares stood by her story and maintained that it was not libelous. The story was also a matter of grave public interest, Olivares said.
There are 47 other libel cases filed by CVC against Olivares, each case corresponding to a story. Medina said that they have appealed 46 of the cases to the Court of Appeals, asking that they be consolidated into one, while one case is already being heard.
The Tribune has been critical of the Arroyo administration since it came to power in 2001. Police operatives raided the office of the Tribune on Feb. 25, 2007 when President Gloria Macapa-gal Arroyo declared a state of emergency. –with reports from abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak
Two media organizations filed last May 30 a petition for a writ of habeas corpus before the Supreme Court asking for the release of jailed radio commentator Alexander “Alex” Adonis.
The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) questioned before the Supreme Court the refusal of Supt. Venancio Tesoro to release Adonis despite a December 2007 parole order from the Department of Justice’s Board of Pardon and Paroles (DOJ-BPP) and a release order from the Davao Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 14 issued last May 26. Tesoro is the warden of the Davao Penal Colony (Dapecol) where Adonis is serving a sentence for criminal libel.
Adonis was sentenced on Jan. 26, 2007 to a five months and one day to four years, six months and one day imprisonment and a fine of P200,000 in a libel complaint filed by House Speaker Prospero Nograles.
Nograles filed libel charges after Adonis claimed in his radio program that Nograles and his alleged paramour, Davao-based broadcaster Jeanette Leuterio, had been caught by the latter’s husband in a compromising situation at a hotel in Manila. Adonis was convicted after missing several hearings and forfeiting his right to present evidence. He now faces another libel case on the same incident, this time filed by Leuterio.
“There is no legal basis for the continued detention of Adonis since he already has a discharge order on the first case and a release order on the second case,” said Adonis’s counsel, lawyer Harry Roque.
The petition argued that “the pending case for libel now with Branch 14 of the city’s Regional Trial Court…should not be a bar to his enjoyment of the parole already granted (to) him.” It added that “Tesoro cannot arrogate unto himself the power to unilaterally declare that there is no legal ground to release petitioner (Adonis) from detention.”
The DOJ-BPP granted Adonis parole on Dec. 11, 2007 after he had served the minimum sentence for the Nograles case. The order was received by the regional parole officer in February 2008, but Adonis was not informed about it. Tesoro decided not to implement the order because of the libel case filed by Leuterio against Adonis for the same incident. Adonis, his counsel, and fellow journalists only found out about the parole order last May 2 when they accidentally ran into the Davao City parole officer.
A parole is the “conditional release of an offender from a correctional institution after he has served the minimum of his prison sentence.”
Adonis, through his counsel Roque, asked Davao RTC Branch 14 Judge George Omelio last May 26 to allow him to post bail for the second libel case on the strength of his parole for the first case. The judge granted the petition and issued a release order after Davao media paid the P5,000 bail bond.
The Davao journalists who went to Dapecol to secure the release of Adonis were however disappointed as Tesoro refused to release Adonis. “We were hoping that Adonis could be released today…but when we arrived the warden told us he could not release Adonis because of the pending (libel) case,” Davao Today reporter Cheryl Fiel said.
Tesoro refused to honor the court order, arguing that Adonis has a pending libel case. “We have to inform higher authorities before obeying the court order to release Adonis,” Tesoro told the journalists who came to fetch Adonis last May 26.
“This is why many people have lost faith in the system. We have done everything by the book, yet this has happened,” Roque said.
Adonis also sought the implementation of Supreme Court Administrative Circular No. 08-2008 on Guidelines in the Observance of a Rule of Preference in the Imposition of Penalties in Libel Cases, which encourages fines over imprisonment, on the libel case filed by Nograles. “We are questioning whether or not the SC Circular could be given a retroactive effect in the case of Adonis,” Roque explained.
Last April, Adonis, with the help of Roque, also filed a complaint with CMFR and NUJP as co-signatories before the United Nations Human Rights Committee regarding Adonis’s plight and calling attention to the country’s archaic criminal libel law. Roque also asked the RTC to re-open the libel case filed by Nograles, on the basis of a Supreme Court memorandum urging the imposition of fines instead of imprisonment in libel cases.
The Burmese junta has seized photography and video equipment after footage on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis came out in foreign media.
The junta confiscated still and video cameras being used by small-scale documentary filmmakers, professionals, proprietors of photography studios, and even those privately owned by households, including those from cyclone-hit Kungyankone town in Rangoon Division.
The junta has put foreign and local media on a watch list in cyclone-affected areas. Military Security Affairs officers have been positioned in every cyclone-affected town, and local political leaders have been told to report on the activities of media personnel and any individual with a camera.
The seizure of film and photography equipment followed reports in state-run newspapers about “anti-government elements and self-centered people” allegedly making money from peddling fabricated news and filming cyclone relief and reconstruction work.
Though the authorities said they had only temporarily confiscated the equipment, none has been returned to owners.
Last May, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Board ordered local newspapers to stop running stories depicting the destruction caused by Cyclone Nagris and to cover only the reconstruction efforts by authorities.
Junta officials were reportedly angry at the head of the censorship board, Major Tint Swe, for having permitted the publication of some cyclone stories that described damage to buildings and loss of property, supplemented by pictures. Junta head Senior General Than Shwe flared up when he found a front-page story from the bi-weekly Eleven News Journal that said: “The plight of storm victims should not be exploited.”
“Because Burmese readers are clever enough to read between the lines, they immediately realized that the story did criticize the junta, who have been showing how ‘kind’ they are, in helping the victims by using international aid as if it were their own,” said a journalist.
“We were also warned that we must not describe how people are starving,” a senior journalist, who has five years’ reporting experience, told Mizzima.
The Burma Media Association (BMA), a Burmese press freedom watchdog based in Thailand, condemned the junta for the restriction, saying it not only violates press freedom but also violates and suppresses the peoples’ right to be informed.
“The Burmese government is trying to conceal the sufferings of the people and is making false claims that they are conducting rescue and relief missions,” said BMA Secretary Son Moe Wai.
A journalist who returned from the worst-hit areas said she found nothing being reconstructed there by the junta.
“So, what should we cover under the title ‘reconstruction phase’?” she asked. “They (the soldiers) haven’t even finished clearing the towns yet, let alone undertaken the ‘reconstruction phase’.”
“Journalists are meant to tell the truth so that people will know of the situation in Burma. Suppressing the press at this time is outrageous and shameful,” Son Moe Wai said.
The junta’s earlier tolerance for local journalists to travel freely appears to have worn thin as nine Rangoon-based journalists from four weeklies who had gone to Hlaing Bwe village in Maw Gyun Township, Irrawaddy Division, to cover the devastation there, were reportedly told to leave overnight last May 18.
An editor for a weekly paper said the journalists arrived last May 18, but were ordered to leave the next morning after being forced to sign a document in which they promised not to return to the village to do any news coverage.
The authorities also detained the famous actor and comedian Zarganar, who had been assisting cyclone victims with relief materials, on the evening of May 4. They also seized from his home documentary video footage and musical recordings on the cyclone, and albums containing songs on the cyclone sung by children.
The documentary videos and photographs of the cyclone, which lashed some townships in Rangoon and Irrawaddy Divisions last May 2 and 3, were very popular among local people and were selling briskly. The video footage captured scenes of bodies strewn about, uprooted trees, collapsed houses and lampposts, and debris heaped on the streets. -Mizzima/IFEX
An Afghan journalist was found dead last June 8 near the city of Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. He had been abducted by unidentified armed men.
Abdul Samad Rohani, a reporter for the Pashto service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was found dead a day after he disappeared in the suburbs of Lashkar Gah. Rohani had three gunshot wounds. A pathologist also said he appeared to have been tortured before he was killed.
A group of unidentified armed men stopped his vehicle last June 7 in Lashkar Gah and took Rohani. According to Reuters, local reporters saw Rohani at a drug-burning ceremony at the airport in Lashkar Gah on the morning of June 7. After lunch, he left home without saying where he was going.
Local authorities believe Rohani was killed by the Taliban.
“We believe this murder was perpetrated by the Taliban to intimidate journalists and attack press freedom,” the Afghan information ministry said in a statement.
The Taliban spokesperson denied any involvement in the killing in an interview with Reuters. The Taliban spokesmen in the region, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, even offered his condolences to Rahimullah Samandar, the head of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association when the body was found.
Many journalists working in Helmand feel all the more powerless and threatened for not knowing clearly who was behind Rohani’s death.
“We do not know who is the enemy,” the Institute for War and Peace Reporting was told by Aziz Ahmad Shafe, a journalist who worked with Rohani for the BBC. “There are people who do what they want and put the blame on the Taliban,” Shafe said. “Journalists are in danger, they are vulnerable.”
“We offer our deepest condolences to the journalist’s family and colleagues. Abdul Samad Rohani was typical of many contributors to the BBC who risk their lives to ensure the independence and pluralism of news in their countries. They cover fighting in the south of Afghanistan despite the risks and report on atrocities against civilians,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said.
Rohani was the head of the BBC’s Pashto service in Helmand province. He had also worked with the Afghan independent news agency Pajhwok since 2004. His colleagues told RSF that he had received several threats from a local chief who accused him of supporting the Kabul government and of “boycotting” news put out by the Taliban. Rohani’s home was the target of an attack in his absence in 2006.
“He was one of our best journalists. He covered a very difficult region. It is a serious blow for press freedom, but they will not manage to silence people with these kinds of acts” said Lotfolah Latif, editor for the BBC in Afghanistan. Danish Karokhel, director of Pajhwok, told RSF of his fears for the safety of journalists who “come under a huge amount of pressure for their independent and impartial work.” The Afghan authorities strongly condemned “this vicious murder.”
Rohani was the second journalist killed in Afghanistan this year, Reuters reported. A Norwegian reporter died in a Taliban suicide bomb attack on a luxury hotel in Kabul in January.
Nasteh Dahir Farah, who was working for the BBC in Somalia was killed last June 7 was shot dead by armed men as he returned from work to his home in Kismayu, southern Somalia. His killers have not been identified. -RSF
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called last June 2 for parliament to scrap a bill that would have given authorities the power to close down media outlets suspected of libel, a move welcomed with cautious optimism by the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES), Glasnost Defence Foundation (GDF), and other International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) members.
The amendment would have allowed the government—even without a court decision—to prevent media outlets from operating if a libelous statement was perceived to have been printed or aired. Russia’s media community warned that it could have been used to stifle independent and critical reporting.
In a letter to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, Medvedev said the bill would hinder journalists while failing to reduce defamation. He criticized the proposed amendment and warned that it would “create obstacles to the normal functioning of the media.”
The amendment “will not help to achieve the desired goal to protect the interests of citizens against the circulation of defamatory information,” he said. “It would be expedient to withdraw the bill from further hearing,” he added.
The State Duma approved the proposed amendment on first reading last April 25. The bill would have added anti-libel measures to a law that bans the publication or broadcast of material encouraging terrorism or extremism, and which has already been criticized as being open to abuse by officials.
While CJES welcomed the move, it noted that the legislation was already doomed. Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, which holds a majority in the State Duma and effectively controls which laws are passed, withdrew its support for the bill last May 19. The party also decided to create a special working group to prepare a new and “improved” draft of the media law, which CJES and GDF fear may result in even tougher legislation.
GDF agreed that the President’s actions were positive, but warned media groups not to rush to conclusions about Medvedev, whom the Kremlin is trying to paint as the “progressive new President.” “It is possible that this is an evil political game in the spirit of the Byzantine traditions so popular in present day Russia,” GDF said.
Many IFEX members rank Russia low on the media freedom scale, highlighting the unsolved murders of more than a dozen journalists during Putin’s eight years as President, as well as increased state control over major television channels and newspapers.
Regardless, the move has awakened cautious hopes of greater media freedom under Medvedev, a former corporate lawyer who was sworn in as President last May 7, succeeding Putin. Last month, Medvedev met with the head of the Russian Union of Journalists, which journalists hope is a sign of the Kremlin doors’ opening up to a new and constructive dialogue.
In another positive development, a Russian court recently ruled as unconstitutional criminal charges brought against Manana Aslamazyan, the former head of the journalism training organization Educated Media Foundation, Article 19 said. She had faced up to five years in prison on “trumped-up charges” of smuggling foreign currency, and the foundation was forced to shut down after police raided its office. -IFEX
The arrest of two Vietnamese reporters last May 13 for “abusing their power” by allegedly misreporting a major corruption scandal has led to an unusual confrontation between Vietnam’s government and the country’s state-controlled newspapers, says the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA).
Nguyen Van Hai of the newspaper Tuoi Tre (“Youth”) and Nguyen Viet Chen of the rival newspaper Thanh Nien (“Young People”) broke a story in 2005 about senior government officials allegedly embezzling funds to wager on European football matches. The story led to the resignation of the transportation minister and other high officials in 2006.
Nguyen Van Hai and Nguyen Viet Chen could be held for as long as four months while authorities investigate, said Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Vietnamese newspapers are generally deferential to the government, which controls most of the nation’s media. But last week’s arrests unleashed a deluge of protests from journalists and bloggers, who said the detentions would discourage aggressive reporting on corruption.
“Honest journalists must be freed,” read a bold headline in Thanh Nien, the flagship publication of the Vietnam National Youth Foundation, where Nguyen Viet Chen worked until he was jailed. The paper is demanding that he be allowed bail, reports SEAPA.
Tuoi Tre published a story on May 14 saying it was inundated by phone calls, emails and letters from angry citizens protesting the government’s move - the most it had received in 33 years of publication.
The English edition of Vietnam.net highlighted the story and solicited mostly supportive views from politicians, lawyers and fellow journalists. National Assembly Deputy Duong Trung Quoc was puzzled as to why the government was “shooting” the messenger while on an anti-corruption drive.
The arrests also point to a worrying trend of the authorities’ detaining, harassing and jailing journalists in Vietnam using criminal and national security laws, said the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and RSF.
On May 13, Somsak Khunmi (Nguyen Quoc Hai), a long-time news assistant and contributor to Chan Troi Moi (Radio New Horizon) was sentenced to nine months in prison on terrorism charges. He was detained last November along with French-Vietnamese reporter Nguyen Thi Thanh Van and a group of political activists working for the pro-democracy Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party). Nguyen was released in December following international pressure.
Authorities say Somsak is being detained for attempting to distribute pro-democracy fliers, a violation of Vietnam’s penal code. But CPJ believes his detention has more to do with his and Nguyen’s reporting on an earlier protest held in Ho Chi Minh City by aggrieved farmers who had been pushed off their land by state authorities.
Bui Kim Thanh, a blogger, dissident and lawyer suffered a similar fate for defending women farmers made homeless by illegal land grabs, says International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC). Police stormed her house and detained her in a psychiatric hospital in March for the second time.
Also in March, freelance journalist and a member of the banned Bloc 8406 pro-democracy movement Truong Minh Duc was given a five-year jail sentence on charges of “taking advantage of democratic rights to act against the state’s interests” and “receiving money from abroad to support complaints against the state”, reports RSF. He often wrote about corruption and abuse by authorities for newspapers and websites in Vietnam and abroad.
The Beijing Games has also been a flashpoint in Vietnam. According to RSF, a Vietnamese government website stated that Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung had called for “absolute security” during the Olympic torch relay in Ho Chi Minh City and warned against “hostile forces” that were ready to disturb the peace.
A leading blogger who posted entries about worldwide demonstrations against the Olympics was kept under close police surveillance and arrested just days before the Ho Chi Minh leg of the relay for taking part in protests against Chinese policy, reports RSF. Nguyen Hoang Hai, better known by his blogging pseudonym of Dieu Cay, was charged with tax fraud, “just a pretext to prevent one of Vietnam’s most influential bloggers from continuing to post comments critical of the government,” RSF says.
U.S. journalist Le Hong Thien was seized by security police in Ho Chi Minh City while covering the torch relay itself, says RSF. Thien is the editor of the US-based magazine Gia Dinh, a reporter on the Viet Times Weekly, and contributor to Radio New Horizon. He is currently under house arrest at his brother’s home and his passport has been confiscated. He has not yet been charged.
According to RSF, at least nine journalists and cyber-dissidents are currently in prison in Vietnam. – IFEX |
