Philippines' Largest TV Network Shutters After Government Order

What happens when you don't have the sophistication of Justin Trudeau to bribe the networks into not printing anything negative about you.

By Sommer Brokaw

Supporters of ABS-CBN held a demonstration calling for government to uphold press freedom,

outside the House of Representatives in Quezon City, east of Manila, Philippines in March. Despite

the protest, the network shutdown Tuesday because of a government order to cease operations.

File Photo by Rolex Dela Pena/EPA-EFE

(UPI) -- The Philippines' largest television network, ABS-CBN, shut down Tuesday after its license expired under government order.

The network, which employed about 11,000 people, signed off after broadcasting its evening news.

The National Telecommunications Commission ordered it earlier in the day to cease TV and radio broadcasts since its 25-year franchise license expired Monday, a statement posted on Twitter shows.

"This is in compliance with the cease and desist order issued by the National Telecommunications Commission today that prohibits ABS-CBN from continuing its broadcast operations effective immediately," a company statement said.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies previously accused the network of airing his opponents' advertisements during the 2016 election campaign, but not his.

Network President Carlo Katigbak apologized to Duterte during congressional hearings on the franchise's renewal in February and clarified operations regarding how it aired advertisements.

Duterte has also been upset by critical news coverage of his bloody war against drugs.

Lawmakers had a resolution to allow the network to continue operation as its renewal was pending. But on Sunday, which marked World Press Freedom Day, Philippines Solicitor General Jose Calida threatened to charge the NTC with corruption if it granted a temporary permit.

Calida also filed a petition in February with the Supreme Court seeking to revoke the ABS-CBN franchise.

Network supporters had protested back in March outside the House of Representatives in Quezon City. Critics added that the network was singled out because of Duterte's disdain for it.

"It sends a clear message: What Duterte wants, Duterte gets," the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said in a statement. "And it is clear, with the brazen move to shut down ABS-CBN, that he intends to silence critical media and intimidate everyone else into submission."

The Philippines has been considered one of the world's most dangerous countries to be a journalist and this year fell down two spots on the World Press Freedom Index to 136th place.

"The order threatens press freedom at a time when the public needs an unfettered press the most," the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines added in a statement. "As the Philippines reels from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, ABS-CBN's critical eye is needed now more than ever to help inform the public."

A free press is the only thing that stands between a healthy democracy and autocracy. Some countries simply murder journalists who reveal state corruption, while others just disappear, and still others are bought and paid for. When the press stops criticizing the government, democracy is in its death throes.

'Save Us from ISIS or Bomb Us with Chemical Weapons,' Pleads Iraqi Woman

A woman presumably from Fallujah, Iraq, has made an emotional appeal in a Facebook video that can’t be independently verified. She says her city is starving and called on the world to save them from jihadists or just bomb the town with chemical weapons.

The video appeared on Facebook on Thursday. Though the description under the footage says the video was shot in Fallujah, it isn’t possible to independently verify the location and the date the video was recorded.

In the footage the woman claims that she and her family are starving. She is seen pointing to a tiny casserole dish, apparently containing what’s left of the food for her family.

“We are dying of hunger. The Arab states, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, think of us, think of the people of Fallujah,” she says, as translated by the Jerusalem Post.

She says that the four entrances to Fallujah “are blocked” and that the local residents have no “access to food, drinks or medicine.”

“I invite you to come to Fallujah, go to the hospital and see the distress the people have been living in,” she said, apparently addressing the international community.

“Save us from Islamic State or bomb us with chemical weapons

so we will immediately die and not have a slow, agonizing death,”

She shouts emotionally.

US history in Fallujah

Fallujah was heavily affected by the 2003 US-led invasion in Iraq, according to reports from Human Rights Watch. In the report dubbed ‘Violent Response: The US Army in al-Falluja’, the group said US authorities should investigate the apparent use of excessive force against Iraqi protesters there in April 2003. 

HRW cited local witnesses who said that US soldiers fired without provocation, killing civilians.

In 2004, the Washington Post released an exclusive report, claiming US deployed phosphorous weapons in the city. 

“Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns,” the paper stated.

The city of Fallujah in Anbar province was once a prosperous place called “a city of mosques.” However, it now appears to be completely deserted since IS militants took control of it back in January 2014. Since then scores of local residents have been killed, many of them starved to death.

RT visited the besieged city in February and saw areas ravaged in the battle against IS in Iraq. Cars caught in shelling and dilapidated buildings where people once lived and prayed now look like scenes from a post-apocalyptic movie.

The main battles between Iraqi forces and IS extremists have been taking place to the northwest of Fallujah.

IS emerged in Iraq in 2013 as an Al-Qaeda affiliate. In 2014, the terror cell attacked Kurdish-held territory in the northern part of Iraq and seized territories in Iraq’s Sunni heartland, including the cities of Mosul and Tikrit. By August of 2014, IS controlled nearly a third of Iraq.