Cagayan anti-mining leader arrested over Facebook post

A lady senior citizen arrested after posting in facebook a year before the Cybercrime law has been passed. The leader of an anti-mining group in Cagayan Esperlita Garcia allegedly posted libelous account about a mining issue on her Facebook page in May last year.

Esperlita Garcia is the president of the Gonzaga Alliance for Environmental Protection and Preservation, a people’s organization that has been leading the opposition to the magnetite sand extraction project operated by Chinese firms in Gonzaga. The companies were allowed to mine magnetite sand by the Cagayan provincial government.

According to Inquirer "Esperlita Garcia said she was arrested at her home in Calayan, Gonzaga, Cagayan, on the strength of a warrant issued by Judge Conrado Tabaco of the Regional Trial Court of Aparri. 

“What really bothers me is how the prosecutors and the judge determined that I should be arrested when I know that the law that supposedly punishes online libel was passed only this year and was even (restrained) by the Supreme Court,” said Garcia, referring to Republic Act No. 10175 or the Anti-Cybercrime Act of 2012."
 
The Mayor of Gonzaga Carlito Pentecostes Jr filed charge against Garcia's account posted on her facebook page regarding the anti-mining concerning in the town on April 30, 2011.

Garcia said "She was merely giving a fractual account of what had transpired during the rally where she quoted the mayor before demonstrators at St. Anthony Academy in Gonzaga."

The arrest warrant “shocked me because I had not received any notice about the case since I filed my counteraffidavit last year,” Garcia told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone. 


A Department of Justice official based in Tuguegarao City supported Garcia’s objection, saying there was no law yet against libelous statements made online.

“The reason the cybercrime law was passed was that the provisions of the Revised Penal Code do not embrace online libel. But even that law (RA 10175) is not yet in effect,” said the official.

“I am a senior citizen but I was treated like a hardened criminal. They did not even give me a chance to bathe or change from my house clothes. They just dragged me into a car,” she said. 

The agents brought Garcia to the NBI regional office in Tuguegarao City, about three hours from Gonzaga, where she was detained overnight Thursday.

On Friday, she was released after posting P10,000 bail

Source: Inquirer