Cagayan anti-mining leader arrested over Facebook post.

By Melvin Gascon, Inquirer Northern Luzon
October 20, 2012

BAYOMBONG, Philippines – The leader of an anti-mining group in Cagayan was arrested Thursday for posting an allegedly libelous account about a mining issue on her Facebook page in May last year.

Esperlita Garcia said she was arrested at her home in Calayan, Gonzaga, Cagayan, on the strength of a warrant issued by Judge Conrado Tabaco of the Regional Trial Court of Aparri.

“What really bothers me is how the prosecutors and the judge determined that I should be arrested when I know that the law that supposedly punishes online libel was passed only this year and was even (restrained) by the Supreme Court,” said Garcia, referring to Republic Act No. 10175 or the Anti-Cybercrime Act of 2012.

Garcia is president of the Gonzaga Alliance for Environmental Protection and Preservation, a people’s organization that has been leading the opposition to the magnetite sand extraction project operated by Chinese firms in Gonzaga. The companies were allowed to mine magnetite sand by the Cagayan provincial government.

The libel charge was filed by Gonzaga Mayor Carlito Pentecostes Jr. over an account Garcia posted on her Facebook page about an aborted antimining rally in the town on April 30, 2011.

She said she was merely giving a factual account of what had transpired during the rally where she quoted the mayor before demonstrators at St. Anthony Academy in Gonzaga.

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