Philippine justice has rejected a request by Maria Resa to travel to Oslo in December to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, citing the journalist’s “risk of fleeing” the country, according to court documents obtained by AFP.
Maria Resa, co-founder of the investigative journalism site Rappler, and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year for their efforts to “preserve freedom of expression”.
The former correspondent of the American television network CNN is free on parole, pending her trial in the second instance, after she was sentenced in June for defamation. She had asked justice to grant her permission to travel to Norway on December 10 for the Nobel Prize ceremony. However, the attorney general in his proposal to the Court of Appeals opposed the request, arguing that her right to travel was “not absolute” and did not prove that it was “imperative” to go to Oslo. “Her repeated criticisms of the Philippines (…) lawsuits reveal that she does not respect the judiciary and is therefore a fugitive suspect,” the attorney general said in a November 8 document.
The Court of Appeal has not yet issued its decision on the matter.
Resa, 58, turned her attention to the atrocities committed during the anti-drug campaign launched by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. According to human rights organizations, tens of thousands of people have been killed in these operations.
Since Duterte was elected president in 2016, Maria Resa and her website have faced lawsuits, arrests and numerous cyber threats. The journalist is being prosecuted for a total of seven cases, which she describes as “ridiculous”. For one of them he risks being sentenced to six years in prison.
Resa also has US citizenship and is currently in the US, after being allowed to travel to that country.
The Nobel Institute said it was “a shame for a country not to release its citizens so they could go to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize”.
SOURCE: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ
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Source From: Capital
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