Foreign, local press groups hit government crackdown

International and Philippine-based free press advocacy groups have banded together to register their opposition to an apparent clampdown on the Philippine media following the government’s declaration of a nationwide state of emergency.

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders voiced great concern over the midnight raid by policemen on the offices of The Daily Tribune in Manila last week "only hours after declaration of a national state of emergency, apparently in the face of a failed military coup."

"We deplore the state of emergency imposed by President Arroyo, who is using it as an excuse to crack down on the opposition," the group said. "We fear a wave of arrests and more closures of newspapers critical of the government."

The Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) was also concerned over the situation of the media in the Philippines and said it "condemns in the strongest possible terms government moves to curtail freedom of the press in the context of the political chaos.

"The harassment of the press is uncalled for, the guidelines are unnecessary and unconstitutional, and the whole move to control the media is suspicious," SEAPA executive director Roby Alampay said.

He added that amid allegations that Mrs. Arroyo is "either overreacting to, or overstating, an alleged threat to the state, it is imperative that Philippine journalists be allowed to do their job without fear of reprisals from the military or the government."

SEAPA’s members are the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, the Jakarta-based Alliance of Independent Journalists, the Jakarta-based Institute for the Free Flow of Information, and the Thai Journalists Association.

Samahang Plaridel said the legal merits of Proclamation 1017 should be argued by lawyers and constitutionalists.

"We in Plaridel need no arguments to justify the freedom of the press. We find it degrading to have to argue for a sacrosanct freedom that is the shining mark of civil society and the one guarantor of every man’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," the group said.

"A government — nay, a free society — that cannot see this has already enslaved itself," it added.

History, according to Samahang Plaridel, shows that the press does not subvert but instead promotes democracy.

"By freely reporting on events and freely and vigorously commenting on them, a free people is able to protect itself from the inevitable abuse of power," the group said.

It pointed out that only in despotic regimes is a free press considered a subversive force, "for it is subversive of the arbitrary exercise of power, subversive of conditions that ‘exalt the few over the degradation of the many,’ subversive of the despotism of armed duplicity."

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines called on all journalists in print, broadcast and digital media to support the Philippine press in its darkest hour.

The Philippine-based Antonio Zumel Center for Press Freedom condemned Proclamation 1017, saying the media "should be allowed to operate and make available to the people the news and the different views on events in the Philippines."

Sen. Joker Arroyo said the government’s move to curtail press freedom, with its initial crackdown on an opposition newspaper, is the "most serious attack" by the Arroyo administration against the Constitution.

Saying that the current administration has been "assaulting the Constitution right and left," he pointed out that Mrs. Arroyo, under the guise of national emergency or public interest, cannot arbitrarily order the takeover or direct the news content of television or radio stations.

"That is the essence of press censorship," Arroyo said. — Artemio Dumlao, Christina Mendez, Eva Visperas, Michael Punongbayan