In an effort to highlight the attacks against press freedom in the international community, alternative media groups have submitted their complaints to experts from the United Nations on Friday, Nov. 11, in Geneva Switzerland.
Bulatlat receives CMFR’s 2022 Award of Distinction.
“However silly the term ‘operatibang internet operator’ sounds, the attempt to link Ms. Olea to the CPP-NPA-NDF for her work in Bulatlat and in NUJP shows how hollow the claim made by Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla before the UN Human Rights Council that red-tagging is simple criticism that is ‘part of a democracy.'”
“To the Court, any limitation or restriction in the exercise of one’s right, no matter the extent, is a form of deprivation and clearly a violation of such right.”
In the motion, Bulatlat argued that the memorandum filed by the NTC “is a content-based prior restraint on protected expression, which is unconstitutional” and Bulatlat “suffered from grave injustice or irreparable injury” from the implementation of the website blocking.
Minerva Lopez of the NUPL, who is also among the lawyers of Bulatlat, said that despite the denial of the TRO, “the merits of the case are yet to be decided upon by the court.”
“The blocking measure imposed through Defendant NTC’s 08 June 2022 Memorandum constitutes censorship and prior restraint or subsequent punishment, as the case may be, on the past, present, and future news as well as editorial content of Bulatlat.com.”
Together with, and partly as a result of, its attacks on the press, it is leaving behind it neither change nor development, but more of the same rule of the few, even worse poverty, and, as it kept reminding us, the use of State violence and terror against anyone who dared exercise the freedoms the Constitution protects.
Bulatlat has condemned this move as prior restraint against protected speech, adding that this is based on hearsay of National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr.
“No matter who is in power, we have remained fearless in our truth-telling. We will continue our work while we also consider all legal remedies available to question, and stop yet another state-sponsored repression.”
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