Altermidya
By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – Human rights defender Cristina Palabay is asking the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court to dismiss the indirect contempt charges filed by Ferdinand Topacio against her and several others.
In a motion to dismiss filed on July 25, Tuesday, Palabay called Topacio’s complaint as frivolous. Palabay maintains that the court should immediately dismiss the case of indirect contempt as “it is obviously filed to vex and stifle their rights to free speech and expression.”
Palabay pointed out that Topacio has no legal standing in filing the indirect contempt against her, former Sen. Leila de Lima and her legal counsels, Rep. Edcel Lagman, Sen. Risa Hontiveros, and former Bagong Alyansang Makabayan Secretary General Renato Reyes. Topacio is not party-litigant in any of the cases filed against De Lima.
Topacio’s complaint stems from the statements of De Lima’s supporters who expressed their dismay over the court’s denial of her petition for bail last June.
Palabay’s statement in particular, said, “it is unacceptable and enraging that De Lima has been detained (since 2017) for such baseless and politically motivated charges for six years, and her recent attempt to be released by questioning the weakness of the evidence in these charges through her bail petition is frustrated.”
The Muntinlupa court has already dismissed two out of three drug-related cases against the former senator.
Read: ‘No doubt from the very beginning’ | De Lima acquitted anew of drug case
She asserted that there is nothing contemptuous in the statement she made. In her motion, Palabay said that she did not violate any court order and her statement is in fact a valid exercise of her constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech and expression.
Palabay also argued that there is no factual controversy involved and there is no clear and present danger to the administration of justice that would constitute the alleged act as contemptuous.
In her motion, Palabay said “the statement made in the purported online news article is, by any stretch of Petitioner’s imagination, far from being ‘extremely serious’ as described by the Supreme Court.”
“At most, the statement is a mere expression of the individual’s sentiment with regard to the situation of former Senator De Lima,” the motion read.
Palabay said they are pushing back against any form of threats against human rights defenders as they are facing renewed forms of judicial harassment.
Read: Karapatan denounces renewed judicial harassment vs rights defenders
“We call on the courts to attend to the more pressing resolution of the cases of at least 778 political prisoners like former Sen. De Lima and our colleague Alexander Philip Abinguna, who has been detained for more than four years on trumped-up charges, instead of harassment suits by the government and its minions against activists and ordinary citizens,” Karapatan said in a statement. (RTS, RVO)
