in the Philippines, where we’re joined by Walden Bello, the longtime scholar and activist who ran for vice president of the Philippines earlier this year. On Monday, Walden Bello was arrested on “cyber libel” charges, in what was widely viewed as a politically motivated case.
Walden’s arrest comes just weeks after the inauguration of the Philippines’ new president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of the former U.S.-backed Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who brutally ruled the Philippines for two decades, from ’65 to 1986, when he was overthrown in the People Power Revolution. The Philippines’ new vice president is Sara Duterte, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, whose so-called war on drugs killed tens of thousands of people.
The charges against Walden Bello stem from comments he made about a member of Sara Duterte’s campaign. On Twitter, Walden Bello wrote, “These people are mistaken if they think they can silence me and suppress my exercise of free speech.”
I was basically at home on Monday afternoon. And the police came in and served me the warrant of arrest, that had been issued a few hours earlier in the southern city of Davao, which Mayor Duterte used to be the head of, and it was transmitted to Quezon City here. And so, it was — we had been waiting for the warrant for weeks. But we didn’t expect the speed, within one day, that the warrant would be issued in Davao, which is several hundred miles away, and issued here to me in Manila.
So, I was brought to the police station. And it was too late to post bail. And people said that that was deliberate, to make me spend a night in jail. And the next day, the bail for
— source democracynow.org | Aug 12, 2022
