{"id":6867,"date":"2022-09-19T04:00:33","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T02:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=6867"},"modified":"2023-02-10T16:24:14","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T15:24:14","slug":"cyber-libel-turned-into-a-political-weapon-against-critical-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/cyber-libel-turned-into-a-political-weapon-against-critical-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyber-libel turned into a political weapon against critical voices"},"content":{"rendered":"

The progressive politician, social activist, and scholar Walden Bello was arrested on August 8, 2022, due to cyber-libel charges. His arrest was widely criticised<\/a>. After spending a night in jail and paying a bail of 96,000 pesos<\/a>, the 76-year-old activist was released.<\/p>\n

During his campaign for vice president Bello made remarks<\/a> about a drug bust at a beach party in Davao in November 2021. The party was allegedly attended by former Davao City Information Office head Jefry Tupas. Bello allegedly accused Tupas in a Facebook post to be involved into the illegal drug trade<\/a>. When the raid became public, then-mayor of Davao City, Sara Duterte-Carpio, dismissed Tupas from the post. Tupas then filed charges against Bello in March 2022 for cyber-libel. He is accused of two violations of Republic Act 10175 or also known as the Cyber Crime Prevention Act<\/a> of 2012. On August 15, 2022, Bello’s lawyers<\/a> filed a petition for a suspension of the proceedings before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) 10 in Davao City; the hearing was supposed to be held on September 8. In April 22, 2022, Bello already handed in his counter affidavit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice’s Office of Cybercrime <\/a>reported in May 2022 that 3,700 cyber-libel cases were already filed, of which 1,317 were filed in court and 1,131 cases dismissed. Twelve cases ended in conviction.<\/p>\n

The 2012 Philippine Cybercrime Law has been used multiple times against critical journalists, government critics, and regular social media users. Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur<\/a> on the right to freedom of expression, expressed in July 2022: “The criminal libel law has no place in a democratic country and should be abolished.”<\/p>\n

Already in 2016, Action Group Human Rights – Philippines condemned<\/a> the abuse of law and issued recommendations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The progressive politician, social activist, and scholar Walden Bello was arrested on August 8, 2022, due to cyber-libel charges. His arrest was widely criticised. After spending a night in jail and paying a bail of 96,000 pesos, the 76-year-old activist was released. During his campaign for vice president Bello made remarks about a drug bust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-freedom-of-press","category-human-rights-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6867"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7883,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6867\/revisions\/7883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}