Unjust vexation penalizes conduct, not commentary

Statement of the Iloilo Media-Citizen Council on the arrest order against journalist Marchel Espina and four others

The Iloilo Media-Citizen Council is alarmed by the order of the Regional Trial Court, 4th Judicial Region Branch 1, in Batangas City directing the arrest of former SunStar Cebu and SunStar Bacolod editor in chief Marchel Espina and four others over an unjust vexation complaint arising from an opinion article published in December 2024.

The complaint, filed by Pedro Fajot Castillo, a district supervising minister of the Iglesia ni Cristo in Batangas, alleges that the contributed piece “Demonic Church Meddling in Politics,” posted on SunStar Cebu and Journal Online, caused him annoyance, irritation, torment, distress, and disturbance. Bail was set at PHP 6,000 for each respondent.

The Council stands with Marchel Espina for the following reasons.

Every citizen, including every minister of every faith, has the right to seek redress for perceived injury. That right does not transform Article 287 of the Revised Penal Code — a catch-all provision on light coercion — into a weapon against opinion. Unjust vexation penalizes conduct, not commentary. When a court allows it to reach an editor over a contributed opinion piece, the offense stops being about vexation and becomes a license to criminalize disagreement.

The sequence here deepens our concern. The complainant earlier filed a cyberlibel complaint against SunStar over the same matter. It was dismissed. Reviving the grievance under a vaguer, easier-to-prosecute offense is not a pursuit of justice; it is a search for whichever door the law left unlocked. Courts and prosecutors should recognize this pattern for what it is.

The consequences will not stop in Batangas. If editors can be arrested because a reader was annoyed, opinion pages across the country will shrink, contributors will be turned away, and the space for public debate — including debate about the role of religious institutions in politics — will narrow to whatever offends no one.

Philippine law and practice already offer proportionate remedies for those aggrieved by published opinion: the right of reply, corrections and clarifications, and complaints before press councils and media-citizen councils such as ours. The IMCC exists precisely so that disputes between the public and the press can be resolved through accountability mechanisms rather than handcuffs.

We call on the prosecution to review and withdraw the case, on the courts to apply the heightened scrutiny that any criminal action against publication demands, and on the Department of Justice to issue clear guidance against the use of unjust vexation to police journalism.