Defend Press Freedom! No to ABS CBN Shutdown!

Defend Press Freedom! No to ABS CBN Shutdown!

Statement of the Filipino-Canadian Writers  and Journalists Network (FC-WJNet)

The Filipino Canadian Writers and Journalists Network (FC-WJNet) joins freedom-loving Filipinos in denouncing the ABS-CBN shutdown by the Duterte administration as a brazen move to intimidate media critical of its policies and practices, curtail press freedom, and crush freedom of expression and information.

The government’s move to shut down ABS-CBN, simply put, is a blatant display of Duterte’s arrogance of power using his allies in the legislature by delaying its decision on the network’s franchise renewal and in the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) by issuing a “cease and desist order” to the largest media network in the country. ABS-CBN delivers timely news to the widest audience in the country and even overseas, and employs eleven thousand employees who will bear the brunt of the closure. And this, at a time when COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in the country.

The Duterte government’s attack on ABS-CBN is an affront to the universal right to freedom of expression guaranteed and protected by the very constitution that Duterte’s allies in Congress have pledged to protect. On its heels comes the assassination of another media practitioner – broadcaster Cornelio Pepino, popularly known as Rex Cornelio, of Dumaguete City. This is another obvious display of this regime’s intolerance of dissent and contrary views that have infuriated the Duterte government due to factual reports on the brutal war on drugs that has killed tens of thousands of Filipinos, other human rights abuses, and bureaucratic corruption and government ineptitude in addressing public health issues at this time of the global pandemic.

At the end of last year, the Freedom for Media, Freedom for All Network recorded 154 incidents of attacks and threats against Philippine media since Duterte assumed office on June 30, 2016. This number includes 15 journalists killed. And of the 154 incidents, “at least 69 linked state agents – public officials from the executive and legislative branches, uniformed personnel, and Cabinet appointees of President Duterte – as known or alleged perpetrators. Of these 69 state agents, about half or 27 are from national government agencies.” There have also been increasing cases of red-tagging of journalists by these state agents and pro-Duterte groups in press statements and through social media outlets.

Press freedom is indeed under siege now under the Duterte administration just as it was shortly before, during and after Marcos’s martial law.

With just two years left in this administration’s term, the ABS-CBN shutdown is just one in a series of schemes to ensure that all institutions including the media are attuned and favorable to his 2022 election agenda. Or worse, as human rights defenders, press freedom advocates, workers, lawyers and other advocacy groups have observed, all these repressive measures are leading toward martial rule.

We stand in solidarity with all media practitioners, human rights defenders, workers and all freedom-loving peoples against this recent move of the Duterte administration to stifle the voices of dissent, the propagation of truth and the people’s clamor for basic change.

Let us unite to defend and fight for freedom of the press, and the people’s right to freedom of expression and information.

No to ABS-CBN shutdown!

Defend press freedom!

End tyranny!

Assert People’s Democratic Rights!

May 7, 2020