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ANOTHER STEP FORWARD TO A REAL DICTATORSHIP..

IHT reported yesterday, 4.1 following

Philippine press comes under official heat

The Philippine press, one of the most vigorous and free-wheeling in Asia, is coming under serious government pressure for the first time since the martial law government of Ferdinand Marcos more than 20 years ago.

Along with hints that the authorities might restrict public assembly, the campaign against the press strikes at the heart of the freedoms that were won in 1986 when Marcos was driven from the presidency by a popular uprising.

It is an insidious form of pressure that involves warnings, watch lists, surveillance, court cases, harassment lawsuits and threats of arrest on charges of sedition.

No one from the press has yet been arrested, although three journalists from The Tribune, a daily newspaper, have been charged with rebellion. No news outlets have been shut down, although troops surrounded television stations for several days.

Journalists say the situation is all the more unnerving because of the uncertainty of what is happening or may happen to them.

"I have a number of people on my list," Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said in a recent television interview. "We are studying them."

This aggressive posture follows a one-week state of emergency imposed Feb. 24 by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in response to what she said was a coup attempt involving an array of people who have been calling for her resignation.

Since then, the police have broken up several gatherings that were seen as critical of the president and have briefly detained some participants.

The gatherings included an annual celebration of International Women's Day on March 8, in which a congresswoman who opposes Arroyo was forcibly detained "to get her out of harm's way."

They also included a mock beauty pageant in which each contestant was to be made up with a mole on her face in imitation of Arroyo.

There also was something else that seemed like a joke - small weekly protest gatherings that at first amounted to buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

The protesters got away with that one, but on March 19, the same group was dispersed by the police as its members walked through a park wearing T-shirts reading, "Out Now" in an evident reference to the president.

Officials have spoken of "intelligence" they had received about planned gatherings in the same manner they have talked about monitoring reporters.

Government statements about the press have played on the intimidation caused by uncertainty.

"The press is not a target of censorship," said the president's press secretary, Ignacio Bunye, "but some members of the press have been charged with violations of law and shall be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen."

The director of the National Police, General Arturo Lomibao, has told the press it must conform to certain standards, but unspecified ones, subject to government interpretation on a case-by-case basis.

He referred to a new catch-all regulation that bans "actions that hurt the Philippine state by obstructing governance including hindering the growth of the economy and sabotaging the people's confidence in government and their faith in the future of this country."

The apparent goal of all this is self-censorship, said Maria Ressa, senior vice president for news and public affairs at the ABS-CBN broadcasting network.

"It's crazy," she said. "You don't know what's happening, but you feel they can move on you at any time."

Ressa has been a leader in demanding clarification of the government's policies toward the press and in filing a class-action lawsuit to bar prior restraint.

"There is definitely fear and uncertainty," she said.

"When government officials say, 'We have the power to shut you down, we have the power to look at your content,' it's intimidation."

Some news organizations have prepared for possible searches or arrests by backing up computer files, setting aside bail money and instructing their staffs on their legal rights if the police enter their offices.

Some journalists have noted that the president's executive secretary, Eduardo Ermita, is experienced in censorship and press manipulation, having served at the top of the Department of Public Information under Marcos.

If the current restrictions are pointing the way toward de facto martial law, as some critics suggest, Ermita said, it is a "smiling" or "laughing" martial law.

The government has chosen in its threatening statements to single out the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, a small, aggressive group of journalists headed by Sheila Coronel, a prominent figure in Southeast Asian press associations.

The center's exposés of corruption, presented during congressional impeachment hearings, were instrumental in bringing down Arroyo's predecessor, Joseph Estrada.

Government officials have said they might charge Coronel and members of her staff with sedition, but the evidence they cite is strangely lackadaisical.

Their only references are to an audiotape posted on the center's Web site in which Arroyo apparently consults with an election official about rigging the presidential vote in 2004.

But as Coronel pointed out in a statement, portions of the tape have been played on radio and television and are posted on a dozen other Web sites and blogs. A version was even played for the press by Bunye, the press secretary.

"It's very insidious," Coronel said. "They say they are studying filing sedition charges. They say they have lists, but they don't say who is on them. This is not how the game should be played. We know our rights, and we should not be harassed by psychological pressure."

Coronel was one of a group of young female reporters who became well known for defying Marcos in the early 1980s when journalists were being harassed and arrested.

The press freedom that is now under threat is something she struggled for herself.

"People went to prison, people died for this freedom," Coronel said, "and if you give it up, it is a betrayal of all the sacrifices that people have made in the past, people I know personally. It really makes me mad."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/03/31/news/manila.php