An appeals court has struck down a 2018 government order that sought to shut down Rappler, an online Philippine news site celebrated for its critical coverage of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs” that left thousands dead.

The Court of Appeals (CA) Special 7th Division, in a ruling on July 23 but publicly released on Friday, ordered the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to “restore the Certificate of Incorporation of Rappler Inc. and Rappler Holdings Corp. in its records and system.”

The court stated that all issuances and actions relating to “[Rappler’s] illegal revocation” must be withdrawn.

Rappler and its chief executive, Nobel Peace prize laureate Maria Ressa, faced years-long legal battles after drawing condemnation from Duterte for the outlet’s critical reporting of the deadly drug war.

“This court decision, the latest in a string of court victories for Rappler, is a much-needed reminder that the mission of journalism can thrive even in the line of fire: to speak truth to power, to hold the line, to build a better world,” the online news portal said in a statement.

“It’s a vindication after a tortuous eight years of harassment. The CA was unequivocal in its rejection of the SEC’s 2018 shutdown order, declaring it ‘illegal’ and a ‘grave abuse of discretion’,” it said.

Rappler’s business certificate was revoked in January 2018 after the SEC claimed the news website was partly owned by foreign entities Omidyar Network, founded by eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar and North Base Media, owned and founded by a group of journalists advocating free press.

Foreign ownership prohibited
The SEC took issue with Philippine depository receipts issued by Rappler to the two foreign groups. The Philippine Constitution prohibits foreign ownership of media sites.

Omidyar subsequently donated its shares to Rappler’s Filipino managers. The CA then asked the corporate regulator to restudy its ruling because the issue had been resolved. However, the SEC upheld its order before Duterte ended his term.

Rappler continued to operate while the website appealed the order.

Philippine media freedom – Rappler wins new court ruling.   Video: Al Jazeera

In its decision, the CA said Rappler is “currently wholly owned and managed by Filipinos, in compliance with the constitutional mandate.”

In 2021, Ressa won the Nobel Peace Prize for shining a light on thousands of extrajudicial killings under Duterte, who is being investigated by the International Criminal Court.

The Philippines ranks among the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.

At least 199 media workers have been killed in the Philippines since the restoration of democracy in 1986, according to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

That figure includes the 32 journalists and media workers murdered in one incident in 2009, the Ampatuan massacre in Mindanao described as the world’s biggest single-day attack on the working press.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Used with the permission of BenarNews.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The National Court has ordered the Papua New Guinea government to disclose the full details of the gold refinery deal it entered into with a Singapore-based company, National Gold Corporation.

The court ordered Prime Minister James Marape (first defendant), Planning Minister Renbo Paita (second defendant), the NEC (third defendant) and Dr Eric Kwa (fourth defendant) to make full disclosure on the project agreement, which would eventually become law and change the entire landscape of PNG’s gold industry.

“The process of gold refinery, while it may be welcome news for the country as to [who is] owning it, especially when a company is proposed to be a proponent, developer or owner of resource, the country needs to know the good and bad of it and the justifications for such arrangements,” Deputy Chief Justice Ambeng Kandakasi ruled in his judgment.

The order follows a court challenge mounted by Justin Parker, owner of Golden Valley Enterprise Limited, PNG’s leading gold buyer and processor, about the validity of the gold refinery agreement between the state and National Gold Corporation.

“I was disappointed when I learnt that an agreement was signed.

“To my knowledge the foreign company will own 70 percent of the refinery whilst the PNG government will only own 30 per cent when we could own for a 100 per cent nationally owned refinery,” Parker said through his lawyer, Saulep Lawyers.

The project agreement which will eventually be made law, will completely change the landscape of PNG’s gold industry.

Accessed unsigned copy
“Coupled with the media publications, I had the benefit of having accessed an unsigned copy of the agreement relating to the Refinery Project and I note with grave concerns how this purported agreement will be very detrimental to the state, as well as all industry stakeholders.

“This agreement will totally shut the doors completely on us local businesses, alluvial miners, gold miners and aggregators around the country.

“It is dangerous to note that there will be no more open market competition and trade, being the fundamentals of democratic society and therefore our Constitution,” Parker said.

Aggrieved with information gathered overtime, Parker filed an application in the National Court on 13 December 2021, seeking :

• A declaration pursuant to Section 51 of the Constitution that the Plaintiff has the right to have access to all pertinent and relevant information regarding the National Gold Refinery and Mint Project relating to the downstream processing of gold in the country, including, policies, statutory business papers, National Gold Corporation Project Shareholder Agreement, all related NEC Decisions (NEC Decision No 73 & 74/2021 dated 17th May 2021, NEC Decision No 267/2021 dated 20th September 2021 and NEC Policy Submission No 208/2021.
• An order that pursuant to Sections 51 and 155 (4) and of the Constitution, the Defendants make available forthwith to all the referenced documents to Parker.

Justice Kandakasi granted these orders and further ordered that: “As the plaintiff submits, there has been no broader, wider consultation and so who stands to benefit, who stands to lose, what are the arrangements and what are the safeguards for alluvial miners or other mining interest holders?

“There is no evidence of any meaningful consultation having being occurred so a disclosure of these documents will enable the plaintiff and such other persons to work out whether they should be challenging the decisions arrived at.”

The court orders:

• The plaintiff is granted leave to proceed ex-parte conditional on the plaintiff filing and serving an affidavit annexing the various email communication between the plaintiff and the defendants in respect of the matter coming to court today.
• Judgment is granted in favour of the plaintiff
• A declaration that pursuant to Section 51 of the Constitution, the plaintiff has the right to have access to all the pertinent and relevant information regarding the National Gold Refinery and Mint Project including the following information:

– (a) Department of National Planning and Monitoring’s Policy Document on the Refinery, Smelting and downstream processing of Gold in the country;
– (b) Statutory Business Papers regarding the National Gold Refinery and Mint Project;
– (c) National Gold Corporation Project Shareholders Agreement;
– (d) NEC Decisions No. 73 & 84/2021 dated 17th May 2021;
(e) NEC Decision No. 267/2021 dated 20th September 2021;
– (f) NEC Policy Submission No. 208/2021.
– Pursuant to Section 155(4) and Section 51 of the Constitution, the Defendants make available forthwith to the Plaintiff copies of all pertinent and relevant information regarding the National Gold Refinery and Mint Project, namely:
(a) Department of National Planning and Monitoring Policy Document on the Refinery, Smelting and downstream processing of Gold in the county;
(b) Statutory Business Papers regarding the National Gold Refinery and Mint Project;
(c) National Gold Corporation Project Shareholders Agreement,
(d) NEC Decisions No. 73 & 84/2021 dated 17th May 2021;
(e) NEC Decision No. 267/2021 dated 20* September 2021;
(f) NEC Policy Submission No. 208/2021.

The defendants shall pay the plaintiff’s costs of and incidental to these proceedings on a party/party basis, to be taxed if not agreed.

Gorethy Kenneth is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A late legal bid to postpone Sunday’s independence referendum in New Caledonia has reportedly failed.

A leading anti-independence leader and president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, Sonia Backes, said the highest French administrative court had rejected an urgent submission to defer the third and final independence referendum until next year.

The submission was filed by 146 voters and three organisations, arguing that campaigning has been hampered by the covid-19 pandemic.

They said it was therefore “unthinkable” to proceed with such an important plebiscite.

In a post on social media, Backes said the vote would go ahead.

For weeks pro-independence parties have unsuccessfully lobbied Paris to delay the vote and they now say they will neither take part in the vote nor recognise its result.

France, which deems the pandemic to be under control, last week flew in almost 250 magistrates and judicial officials to oversee Sunday’s vote.

It also flew in about 2000 extra police, including riot squads, to provide security for the referendum.

A pro-independence delegation from New Caledonia has left for New York to raise its opposition to the referendum with the United Nations.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Vanuatu Supreme Court judge Justice Oliver Saksak has granted a stay on the vacation of 19 seats in the country’s Parliament.

On Tuesday, the Speaker of Parliament, Gracia Shadrack, declared the seats of Prime Minister Bob Loughman and 18 of his MPs vacant because they had been absent from Parliament on three consecutive occasions in breach of standing rules.

The MPs were absent on the third occasion to avoid a vote of no confidence motion, but they had also been striving through the past week to remove Shadrack, after he appeared to side with the opposition.

Shadrack encouraged the MPs to seek a court ruling on his actions and now Justice Saksak has issued a stay on the actions of the Speaker, with a court hearing to be heard from 10am tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the Speaker has adjourned Parliament until Friday when debate on his actions, and the motions that are in play, can begin.

RNZ Pacific’s correspondent in Vanuatu said the shutout of the government MPs was all people were talking about in the kava bars.

He said everyone in Vanuatu knew that under normal practice, it was the opposition that would boycott parliamentary sessions.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Alexander Gillespie, of the University of Waikato

Was Brenton Tarrant’s silence and acceptance of sentence in court a final act to expand his notoriety? Was his disavowal of previously expressed ideological views a trick?

A person capable of planning the Christchurch mosque attacks so methodically may well have mapped the last public chapter, too. By saying little and expressing no real remorse, alone and without even his own lawyer, was he hoping the world would see a determined stoicism, an enigma?

Or did he simply realise the controls around court behaviour were so well designed that he couldn’t hijack proceedings?

For now at least, we can’t know. All we can say for sure is what the High Court in New Zealand has heard over the days leading to today’s sentence of life in prison with no minimum parole: using overwhelming firepower against defenceless civilians he took the lives of 51 men, women and children, injured many more and left even more bereft.

His silence notwithstanding, then, he is not an enigma.

As the first person in New Zealand to be convicted of terrorism, he comes from the same dark place that spawned the likes of Anders Breivik in Norway, Darren Osborne (who drove a truck into Muslim worshippers in London in 2017) and Dylann Roof (who attacked black parishioners in a South Carolina church in 2015).

Tarrant had even carved the names of Alexandre Bissonette (who attacked a mosque in Quebec in 2017) and Luca Traini (who attacked African migrants in Italy in 2018) on the magazines of his guns.

So now he joins that list of mass murderers, animated by a hatred of tolerance, equality and multicultural values, who came to believe indiscriminate violence against unarmed civilians was justified.

The first ever non-parole sentence
If this was America, he could have been sentenced to death or given a cumulative jail sentence of over 1,000 years. Neither option is available in New Zealand. There are many good reasons for having no death penalty, including in this case the denial of any aspirations to martyrdom.

The most extreme penalty New Zealand law does allow is jail for life without any minimum parole period. Although a sentence of 30 years without parole has been imposed, life without parole has never been given.

It is fair to say that Judge Mander, who did an excellent job throughout, met public expectation with his decision to ensure Tarrant never again walks outside a guarded wall.

What the law demands
Such a sentence is justified if the court is satisfied no minimum term of imprisonment would be enough to satisfy the main considerations: accountability, denouncement, deterrence or protecting the community.

In short, the Sentencing Act sets out the purposes of sentencing: to hold the offender to account for the harm done to the victims and the wider community, to denounce the crime and deter others from replicating those acts.

Supplementary principles a sentencing judge must consider include the gravity of the offending and its seriousness compared to other types of offences. The judge is required “to impose the maximum penalty prescribed for the offence if the offending is within the most serious of cases for which that penalty is prescribed” (unless there are mitigating circumstances).

The only mitigation that would have carried weight in this case was Tarrant pleading guilty and therefore shortening proceedings. Other mitigating factors, such as remorse or offers to make amends, were not to be seen or were deemed not genuine.

Placing the victims first
The other principle Judge Mander had to take into account relates to the effect of the offending on the victims. As the 91 victim impact statements heard over three days made clear, those victims displayed remarkable fortitude, bravery, wisdom and humanity.

But the black hole of pain the killer left in his wake is near incomprehensible.

Further aggravating factors justifying this sentence were that these were pre-meditated crimes of hate, terrorism, particular cruelty and involved the use of weapons.

Tarrant ticked all of the boxes. The enormity of his crimes made them unlike anything that had gone before. New Zealand has experienced mass shootings in the past, and murders based on racial hatred, but nothing of this scale.

On top of that, no one had employed the internet to spread hatred as happened in Christchurch, nor has anyone pleaded guilty to an act of terrorism before.

When all of these considerations were put on the scales of justice, Judge Mander would have seen that, small acts of mitigation aside, an unprecedented sentence was the only appropriate outcome for an unprecedented crime.

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law at the University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz