Nobel laureate Ressa rules out going into exile over Philippine charges

Philippine Nobel Prize winning journalist Maria Ressa ruled out on Monday going into exile over legal challenges she faces, and her lawyers urged the government of President Rodrigo Duterte to drop all charges against her.

Ressa, the first Nobel laureate from the Philippines, shared the Peace Prize with Russian investigative journalist Dmitry Muratov, a move widely seen as intended as an endorsement of free speech rights under fire worldwide.

Ressa’s news site, Rappler, had its licence suspended and she has faced legal action for various reasons, motivated, supporters say, by her scrutiny of government policies, including a bloody war on drugs launched by Duterte.

“Exile is not an option,” Ressa told a streamed news conference with her legal team, adding that she felt a climate of violence and fear under Duterte’s term was easing before 2022 elections.

Free on bail as she appeals against a six-year prison sentence handed down last year for a libel conviction, Ressa is facing five tax evasion charges and a corporate case with the regulator.

“You don’t know what freedom feels like until you almost lose it,” Ressa said from the U.S. city of Boston, where she is on an academic visit.

The Philippines saw its ranking in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index drop two notches to 138 out of 180 countries, and the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks the Philippines seventh in the world in its impunity index, which tracks deaths of media members whose killers go free.