Maria Ressa. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON
MANILA, Philippines — “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Journalist and Rappler founder Maria Ressa on Tuesday said Malacañang’s congratulatory message on her winning the Nobel Peace prize was laced with a “hit” and a “reminder” of her cyberlibel charges.
“I suppose, thank you, and then what I didn’t appreciate is, almost hand-in-hand, it came with a hit,” she said in an interview over ABS-CBN’s TeleRadyo.
“Hand-in-hand with that [praise] was this reminder — which is a lie — that the cyberlibel complaint is filed by an individual, and what the government repeatedly refuses to say is that it takes a government to actually file a criminal case,” she added.
Ressa insisted that her cyberlibel case was actually a government case, thus, the government should own up to it.
“So this is the government’s case, it’s the Department of Justice’s, it is their decision. So they should really own it. So thanks, but not thanks,” Ressa continued.
INQUIRER.net has sought Malacañang statement on Ressama remarks and is yet to receive a response.
Ressa is one of two media workers who won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”
According to the Nobel Prize management, Ressa shares the award with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.
In a press briefing on Monday, in the same breath that presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Ressa’s win is a “victory for a Filipina,” he said she still has to “clear her name before the courts.”
Roque also insisted that press freedom in the Philippines is not under attack, and Ressa’s award was “not a slap on the government.”
“There is no slap there because as everyone knows, no one has ever been censored in the Philippines. A journalist who claims a chilling effect should not be a journalist,” he said.
However, Ressa countered this, citing the ABS CBN closure, the country’s low ranking on the World Press Freedom Index, and her arrest warrants for cyberlibel.
“Hindi natin kailangan tingnan ang lahat o pakinggan lahat, ‘yung facts naman nandoon,” she said.
(We don’t have to listen to everything they say because the facts are there.)
“‘Yung battle nating mga journalists saka nating mga Pilipino is dapat tingnan natin ‘yung facts,” she added.
(Our battles as journalists and Filipinos is that we have to look at the facts.)
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