We in the Altermidya Network condemn the online harassment against our news reporter and secretariat member, which we believe is another case of intimidation on the independent media.

Our staff, Adrian Puse, who is also one of the network’s safety officers, received a private message yesterday, December 19, from a certain “Bob Dinelli” on Facebook. The person sent threats such as “uunti-untiin kita”, “alam ko bahay mo at pinagtatrabahuhan mo”, and “huling pasko (mo) na ito”.

The sender also named Adrian’s sister, her address, and his girlfriend’s name and email address in his threat. The user account “Bob Dinelli”, apparently created just recently, has been taken down by Facebook after being reported.

Days before, Adrian’s girlfriend received a message asking her to “cooperate” with the sender in settling a certain “injustice” that Adrian had supposedly done. The sender also mentioned specific details of Adrian’s whereabouts, which are all obviously fabricated and could easily be disproved.

These acts, clearly meant to intimidate Adrian in his task as a journalist, are a serious concern amid unrelenting attacks against independent media, rights defenders, and the administration’s perceived critics.

Only last week, online news outfits Rappler and Vera files fended off distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against their news sites. Major broadcast network ABS-CBN also reported that cyberattacks caused its website to be inaccessible for several hours on December 11.

We condemn the continuing attempts to silence media practitioners with threats, harassment, cyberattacks, and intimidation. Independent journalists will not be coerced against these attacks against media freedom, especially now when our responsibility of truth-telling is more urgent than ever. #