The Legislature finds that there has been a disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances. - California
The case of Dr. Romeo Quijano,
and a proposed law to stop intimidation lawsuits in the Philippines
The Problem
Environmental defenders may find themselves named as defendants in defamation lawsuits in local courts. All too often, the goal of those who bring these lawsuits is to silence environmental defenders who publicly criticize projects or practices that harm both the environment and affected communities. This disfavored type of intimidation lawsuit is known in the U.S. as a "SLAPP suit" (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).
In effect, those who bring SLAPPs seek to transform public debates into lawsuits in order to prevent the airing of legitimate concerns on matters of great public interest. These suits violate the human rights of environmental defenders and those on whose behalf they speak. See Human Rights Violated by SLAPP defamation suits. The problem of SLAPP suits is not restricted to the U.S.: the Philippines in particular has seen a huge proliferation of these lawsuits in recent years.
Dr. Romeo Quijano
Romeo Quijano is a physician and professor of pharmacology and toxicology in the Philippines. He had heard that the people of Kamukhaan, a village adjoining a large banana plantation on the island of Mindanao, were suffering from unusually high rates of disease. When he studied the health effects on the villagers of what he believed to be the overuse of a number of pesticides, Dr. Quijano found dozens of families who appeared to be suffering from pesticide poisoning.
Dr. Quijano videotaped his interviews with the villagers. When he arrived home, he assigned his daughter a summer project of writing a story from the taped interviews. She wrote the article with her father's help and it was published in the newspaper. The article described the harm to the environment, and detailed the unusually high number of people suffering from significant health problems, linking these problems to pesticide exposure.
The publication of the article resulted in a libel action being filed against Dr. Quijano and his daughter by the fruit company. Dr. Quijano and his local lawyer welcomed assistance from EDLC and American lawyers, who prepared an extensive legal brief for use in his case. The brief showed how international human rights law prohibits the use of defamation laws to penalize environmental defenders in the exercise of their rights of free speech, petition, and citizen participation, and how human rights bodies have decided cases to this effect.
http://www.edlc.org/cases/individuals/dr-romeo-quijano/
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