The Future of Press Freedom in Duterte’s Philippines Is Only Getting Bleaker

“No law shall be passed,” reads the 1987 Philippine Constitution, “abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press.”

Yet witnesses heard police chief Jun Alejandrino say the Pinoy Weekly is “illegal” and “teaches people to fight the government” as officers seized thousands of print copies of the progressive magazine during a morning raid on July 26, days after a wide-reaching anti-terrorism law took effect.

The scenes from that day became iconic: Philippine National Police officers carried handfuls of magazines out of the office of an urban poor organization in Manila and loaded them into a police vehicle after allegedly ordering office staff to give up the magazines or “something will happen.”

The police station behind the raid told the Philippine Star the materials were voluntarily surrendered after officers identified them as “subversive.” That account is disputed by numerous eyewitnesses, but even if it were true, the open seizure of alternative magazines felt like a door slamming on any hope that Philippine press freedom, battered by government-backed efforts to close the leading broadcaster ABS-CBN and pursue criminal cases against Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, is going to survive the reign of President Rodrigo Duterte.

Police insisted the new anti-terrorism law, which gives the executive branch unprecedented power to identify suspected “terrorists” and order their arrest and detention without warrant or judicial involvement, had nothing to do with the seizures of Pinoy Weekly copies. If that’s true, it’s indicative of how comfortable authorities have become with silencing apparent dissent, just as police in Cebu and General Santos did earlier this year when civilians who criticized the government’s COVID-19 response on Facebook were arrested.

The anti-terrorism law creates explicit space for authorities to crack down on dissenters, including the press, who publish material considered to be subversive. The law’s constitutionality is being challenged by multiple Supreme Court petitions, but the high court, packed with Duterte’s hand-picked justices, is unlikely to determine that the censure of publications deemed afoul of the law is in violation of constitutional press freedom protections.

Recent actions have served as warning shots to publishers not to end up on Duterte’s bad side.

ABS-CBN had its franchise renewal application rejected, taking it off the air, after it angered Duterte by allegedly not airing his campaign advertisements in 2016 and airing reports critical of the president’s deadly war on drugs, which the country’s rights commission estimates has killed over 27,000 people.

The closure of ABS-CBN cost thousands of jobs, cut news access to millions of rural Filipinos reliant on the free-to-air channel, and led to the company, which is still allowed to continue its digital operations, to report its first-ever loss as a publicly-traded company during the first half of 2020.

Rappler, a digital news publication which often reports critically on rights violations under the Duterte administration, continues to face attacks after CEO Maria Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos were convicted of “cyber libel.” The unprecedented June court decision could have ramifications for journalists throughout the country, especially those who may not be able to afford to fight cases brought against them.

Ressa is fighting several other court cases, including a tax evasion charge she said in July was “politically motivated” upon pleading not guilty.

She was recently denied permission to travel to the United States to attend panel discussions on the documentary “A Thousand Cuts,” which is about Rappler and her own struggles against the Duterte administration, and to receive the National Press Club’s 2020 International Press Freedom Award. The Court of Appeals, which is now handling Ressa’s libel conviction, said her reasons for travel were “not necessary and urgent,” although Rappler reporter Lian Buan noted that courts usually grant motions to travel abroad.

On the same day, a government task force to end communist violence attacked journalist Atom Araullo over his documentary on a Lumad Indigenous school in Manila. The task force quoted alleged Indigenous leaders saying Araullo’s documentary was “blatantly propagandistic” and connected Araullo to communist rebels.

The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines accused the task force of using pro-government Indigenous leaders – a tactic it has used extensively in Mindanao – to falsely condemn Araullo and the school in Manila, which the task force has previously falsely branded a haven for communist rebels.

Worryingly, in Duterte’s Philippines, being branded a “communist” can be fatal – and journalists critical of the government must put their jobs and their lives at risk to report. Even if they remain unscathed, of course, the magazines publishing their stories could always be seized by police.