The heartbeat of democracy
If press freedom is, as the late American diplomat Madeleine Albright once said, the “heartbeat of democracy,” then the conviction of community journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio suggests that democracy in the Philippines now palpitates under strain.
On Thursday, Cumpio, former executive director of the alternative news outfit Eastern Vista, became the “first journalist in the world to be convicted of terrorism financing,” according to Bi Lih Yi, Asia Program Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Judge Georgina Perez of the Tacloban City Regional Trial Court Branch 45 sentenced Cumpio and Mariel Domequil, finance officer of the Rural Missionaries Philippines Eastern Visayas, to a prison term of 12 to 18 years after finding them guilty of violating the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012.
Cumpio’s case began with patterns grimly familiar to journalists and activists targeted during the administration of former President Rodrigo Duterte: Red-tagging, surveillance and a midnight arrest. They were among five people arrested by the military in Tacloban City in February 2020, for allegedly giving cash and ammunition to the communist New People’s Army (NPA).
Under a cloud of doubt
In her Jan. 22 decision, the Tacloban judge acquitted the two of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives but convicted them of terror financing, giving weight to the testimonies of four rebel returnees who had supposedly surrendered to the government. “When the testimonies of different witnesses independently coincide on the material points of the incident, such harmony is a strong badge of truth rather than fabrication,” wrote Perez.
Meanwhile, the judge rejected the defense of Cumpio and Domequil, who provided screenshots of their activities placing them elsewhere on March 29, 2019, the day they supposedly gave P100,000 and boxes of ammunition to an NPA rebel.
But as Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay noted, the court appeared to ignore serious doubts cast against the credibility of the witnesses and the legality of the search and seizure of evidence against the accused. “The essential elements of terrorism financing were never established,” she said.
Cumpio’s conviction carries consequences far beyond the prison sentence and raises profound questions about the use of extraordinary antiterror laws against activists and journalists.
Human rights lawyers and advocates have stressed that prosecutors leaned heavily on intelligence claims treated as fact, while serious concerns about witness credibility and the legality of the initial search were left unresolved.
Implications beyond journalism
“[Cumpio’s] conviction does not bode well for the media’s ability to report on the issues that Frenchie did without fear of reprisal or retribution,” the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said.
Note that Cumpio’s arrest and prosecution occurred at the height of the Duterte administration’s war on drugs, a period when police conduct was so deeply compromised that the United Nations documented a pattern of evidence planting to justify arrests and killings. That same law enforcement culture casts a long shadow over prosecutions that emerged from the drug war. When courts accept contested evidence from this period with minimal scrutiny, the burden of proof for grave charges such as terrorism financing is dangerously diminished.
The implications extend beyond journalism, as the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers warned. What is at stake is not only the liberty of Cumpio and her co-accused, but the safety of civil society actors whose work depends on the freedom to speak and organize.
An ominous signal
By their nature, terror laws carry immense coercive power. When applied loosely, they chill speech, deter association and shrink civic space. These are outcomes that fundamentally conflict with democratic governance.
The Eastern Visayas police crowed about the court ruling, saying it proved the “independence of the judiciary and the rule of law reflected in this outcome,” adding that it “highlights the government’s firm commitment to combating terrorism and cutting off financial support to any terrorist activities.”
But security achieved at the expense of civil liberties, including free speech, ultimately weakens the rule of law rather than empowers it, for the strength of democracies lies in how faithfully they protect the public from state abuses. In short, a democracy ceases to be one when it exploits the law to trample on human rights.
Cumpio’s conviction sends an ominous signal–not only to media workers who report from the margins–but to a society that relies on them to hold power to account. This is why Filipinos must not forget Albright’s warning against silencing the free and independent press; else, the loss will be borne not by one journalist alone but by a nation diminished by the erosion of press freedom.
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