Philippines: Libel Case vs Environmental Activist, Journalist Junked

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PUBLISHED ON December 15, 2007 AT 7:53 AM

Philippine environmental activists today lauded the dismissal of a P5.5 million civil case filed by Davao-based banana exporter Lapanday Agricultural and Development Corporation (Ladeco) against toxicologist Dr. Romeo V. Quijano, president of Pesticide Action Network Philippines, and his daughter Ilang-Ilang Quijano, a journalist .

Ladeco, owned by a large landowning family and an exporter of Cavendish bananas to Japan, filed separate civil and criminal cases against the Quijanos after they authored an article in the defunct Philippine Post in 2000 on the health and environmental effects of pesticide poisoning in Kamukhaan, a village adjacent to Ladeco’s banana plantation in Digos, Davao del Sur. The initial criminal libel case filed by the company against the authors, editors and publishers was dismissed in 2002.

PAN Philippines received a copy of the decision on Human Rights Day, December 10, when Judge Renato Fuentes of Branch 11 of the Regional Trial Court in Davao City ordered the case dismissed. Fuentes denied the defendants claim for moral damages and ordered Ladeco to pay P50,000.00 to the Quijanos in attorney’s fees, The Quijanos, however, incurred more than P300,000.00 in legal costs in the course of the case. Ladeco is owned by the Lorenzo family, including former Department of Agriculture secretary Cito Lorenzo, a close ally of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“We laud the dismissal of the civil charges filed by Ladeco against the Quijanos. This is a classic case of a SLAPP suit being dismissed for utter lack of merit,” Clemente Bautista Jr., National Coordinator of Kalikasan Peoples’ Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) said.

“SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) are lawsuits ranging from libel to conspiracy used by powerful corporate entities against non-governmental individuals or groups defending issues of marginalized sectors, such as human, labor, peasant or consumer rights, environmental protection, national patrimony and the like,” Bautista said.

“SLAPPs are a form of litigation filed by usually powerful entities against less financially-capable critics with the intention of intimidating and silencing them in the course of a lengthy and costly legal battle. Environmental groups in other countries have faced SLAPPs by commercial real estate developers, companies, and the like. In the Philippines, these “powerful entities” using SLAPPs are usually foreign-owned mining or logging firms or elite land-owning families who control and extract resources from vast tracts of lands,” Bautista explained.

Many other environmental advocates throughout the Philippines are also currently facing SLAPP suits, Bautista added.

“We also hope that other SLAPP cases against environmental advocates will be dismissed. These includes the P10 million libel case filed by Lafayette Mining against the research NGO Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines (CEC-Phils) and its Executive Director Frances Quimpo,” Bautista said.

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One Response to “Philippines: Libel Case vs Environmental Activist, Journalist Junked”

anti Says:
January 8th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Hay, first of all, my name is Anti, a student from Indonesia, i would like to ask you something.
Could you tell me what regulation used in Philippines on criminal libel or press act? It would help me much.

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