FCCT Statement on the conviction of Rappler journalist Maria Ressa

The professional membership of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand is shocked by the conviction by a Manila court of Maria Ressa, on questionable charges of violating the 2012 Cybercrime Law. Ms. Ressa, the founder and executive editor of the online news site Rappler, faces up to six years in prison.

The charge was filed by Filipino businessman Wilfredo Keng, five years after an article was published in Rappler raising questions about his links to a former Supreme Court judge. The article in question was published before the Cybercrime law was passed. Criminal libel complaints in the Philippines cannot be filed more than a year after the alleged offence, and the Cybercrime law cannot be applied retroactively. However, Mr. Keng exploited a technicality, as Rappler made a small typographical correction to the article in 2014, and the Department of Justice has now ruled that Cybercrime charges can now be filed up to 12 years after the alleged offence.

The FCCT opposes criminal defamation in principle. Damage to reputation in most countries is a civil matter, to be adjudicated in civil courts, with no risk of criminal punishments being imposed. Criminal defamation is widely misused in countries like Thailand, where it can be exploited to blackmail defendants into paying large out-of-court settlements or to silence political critics and human rights defenders.

The dubious basis for this criminal conviction of a well-respected journalist in the Philippines, along with multiple other legal cases filed against Rappler under the Duterte government, amount to a serious attack on media freedom, which affects the work of all journalists in the country. Maria Ressa should be allowed to go free to continue holding those in power in the Philippines to account.

Please find our statement in a PDF below.

FCCT-Statement-on-Maria-Ressa Download