Journalists Assail Seizure of Magazine
Foreign journalists in the Philippines voiced concern Friday about the impounding of a Hong Kong news magazine and said this and another state move amounted to a “potential assault on press freedom.”
The Foreign Correspondents Assn. of the Philippines said in a statement that the recent impounding by a Manila court of copies of the Far Eastern Economic Review was unprecedented under President Corazon Aquino’s government.
Thousand of copies of the review, later ordered released for a cash bond, were held after a local businessman filed a $1.2-million libel suit against the weekly magazine.
Jose Alvarez, a timber concessionaire, said a November edition of the magazine libeled him by making it appear that his company was plundering Philippine forests.
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