(Eagle News) — Rappler’s Maria Ressa on Wednesday, Feb. 13, maintained her arrest for cyberlibel was only part of the government’s efforts to silence media critical of the administration, an allegation the Palace has vehemently denied.
“We are not intimidated,” she said.
According to Ressa, “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 was apparently referring to the fact that National Bureau of Investigation agents came to serve the warrant for her arrest on Wednesday afternoon.
In a statement, Rappler said the warrant was served “close to 5 p.m…when courts,” where she would have been able to post bail for her temporary liberty, “were about to close.”
“No amount of legal cases, black propaganda and lies can silence Filipino journalists who continue to hold the line,” Ressa said.
No infringement on press freedom
But in a television interview, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo maintained Ressa’s arrest was only part of the legal process.
He said Ressa and her camp–Rappler and former reporter Reynaldo Santos— were given time to rebut the allegations against them in connection with the Rappler article that was the subject of the complaint.
The article that described a businessman as “controversial” and as having ‘”shady deals,” among others, was published in 2012 and edited in 2014.
In ordering the indictment of Ressa and her camp, the DOJ panel concluded that the elements of libel were present in the article.
It also argued that while the 2012 publication of the article was not covered by the Cybercrime Prevention Act that was enacted only in September of that year, “we cannot share the same view with respect to the 19 February 2014 publication” as the “republication of the article as may have been modified, or revised is a distinct and separate offense.”
“Under the ‘multiple publication rule’, a single defamatory statement, if published several times, gives rise to as many offenses as there are publications,” the panel explained, citing Soriano v. Intermediate Appellate Court.
The panel also debunked the argument of Ressa and her camp that they could no longer be charged as more than a year has passed since the publication of the article, assuming the offense was indeed committed.
According to the panel, since the crime was committed with the use of information and communication technologies, its penalty is raised to one degree higher than the penalty prescribed for libel, as specified in Section 6 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act.
It added that based on RA No. 3326, which governs the prescription of offenses punished by special laws, such as the Cybercrime Prevention Act, “the prescriptive period of the offense charged is 12 years.”
The panel also denied the respondents’ argument the 2014 publication of the article was covered by a temporary restraining order then issued by the Supreme Court on the cybercrime law, saying that the TRO merely suspended the implementation of the law for the duration of that TRO.
In the television interview, Panelo also denied there was any meaning to the arrest warrant being served on a Wednesday afternoon, saying what was “frowned upon” in the first place was if the warrant was served on Friday afternoon.
This would mean, after all, that courts would have been closed over the weekend and there would have been no way of posting bail until Monday.
“She can post bail tomorrow morning,” Panelo said.