MANILA (UCAN): “I will sue them,” Margarita Valle, said after she was arrested on June 9 having been supposedly “mistaken” for a wanted person in Mindanao, the southern Philippines, 
 
The columnist with the Davao Today newspaper, will sue the police for illegal detention, recounted that police officers ignored her appeals to call friends to verify her identity and held her incommunicado for 12 hours. She said that they also failed to read her her rights and refused a request to examine the warrant for her arrest.

MANILA (UCAN): A proposal in the Philippine Congress to qualify a provision in the country’s constitution on freedom of speech has drawn flak from various quarters.
 
Allies of the president, Rodrigo Duterte, in the House of Representatives proposed to insert the qualifier, responsible, in the constitution, to read “No law shall be passed abridging the ‘responsible exercise’ of freedom of speech.”
 

MANILA (UCAN): The move by the Philippines’ Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on January 15 to revoke the license of online news agency, Rappler, has sparked suspicion and outrage among media and human rights groups in the country.
 
The agency has been highly critical of the government of president, Rodrigo Duterte, especially the deadly war on drugs.