Weaponizing The Courts To Silence Its Critics – The Iglesia Ni Cristo Playbook

This week, three of the world’s most respected press freedom watchdogs — Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the World Association of News Publishers — publicly condemned a criminal case pending in a Batangas court against Filipino journalist Marchel Espina, former editor-in-chief of SunStar Cebu. Her crime? An opinion column published in December 2024 titled “Demonic Church Meddling in Politics,” which criticized the Iglesia Ni Cristo’s descent into partisan power-brokering. The complainant is Pedro Castillo, an INC district supervising minister. The charge is “unjust vexation” — a catch-all offense so trivial it carries a maximum of thirty days in jail, yet serious enough to drag a journalist through years of hearings, travel costs, and legal fees that are grinding her down financially.

CPJ called the case “frivolous.” HRW noted she is the 41st Filipino journalist prosecuted over their work since July 2022. WAN-IFRA denounced the “spurious claims.” The INC’s spokesman, asked to comment, said nothing.

They did not need the case to succeed. That was never the point. The point is the process. The punishment is the prosecution.

And if you think this is an isolated incident — one overzealous minister, one thin-skinned district — then you have not been paying attention. This is a machine. It has been running for more than a decade. And today I am going to lay out the pattern so plainly that no one, member or not, can pretend they do not see it.

The Pattern: A Decade of Legal Persecution

Go back to 2015, the year the corruption inside the Central Office could no longer be contained, and watch what happened to every single person who spoke.

Isaias Samson Jr., then editor-in-chief of the church’s own Pasugo magazine, former Sanggunian Minister, said he was illegally detained in his home by the Sanggunian’s men after being suspected of blogging about corruption. When he escaped and spoke out, the church answered with expulsion and libel suits, forcing him into hiding. When he later filed complaints against the church leadership, the Department of Justice — this is the same DOJ that jumps when the bloc vote whistles — junked his suit against the Iglesia executives. The accused INC officials did not even bother showing up to DOJ hearings, and nothing happened to them. Nothing ever does, here.

Lowell Menorca II, an expelled unordained minister, confirmed he was abducted in 2015 — taken from Sorsogon, a grenade case materializing against him overnight, then illegally detained with his wife and 2.5 year-old daughter for months. When the Supreme Court’s habeas corpus proceedings finally pried him loose, the church’s answer was not repentance but paperwork: libel case after libel case — a third was filed almost the moment he walked free. His complaint against the Sanggunian? Junked. His persecutors? Untouched. He and his family had to flee to Canada to live without looking over their shoulders — joining a growing line of ex-INC members seeking refugee protection abroad because their own country’s institutions could not protect them from a church.

Rovic Canono, another expelled member the church suspected of running critical pages, was arrested in November 2016 at his condominium — and note the details, because the details are the confession. The complaint was nominally filed by his estranged wife, but the prosecution was being handled by Wilfredo Santos of the INC’s own legal department, and when Canono arrived at Camp Karingal, the church’s Net25 cameras were already waiting to film his humiliation. A “private family matter,” with the church’s lawyers running it and the church’s television network covering it. They do not even bother to hide the machinery anymore.

Bro. Eli Soriano of Ang Dating Daan — not even one of ours, but a preacher from another religion who dared to debate INC doctrine on air — spent decades as a target of INC-initiated suits and complaints. The courts eventually ruled that his fiery on-air commentary was not even libelous, but by then the process had done its work: he lived out his final years in exile and died in Brazil in 2021, never able to safely come home. Ask yourself what kind of “church of Christ” hounds an old preacher across the planet.

And then there is the case that should keep every fair-minded Filipino awake at night.

Bro. Angel Manalo: Nine Years and Counting

On March 2, 2017, police raided 36 Tandang Sora and arrested 30 people — including Felix Nathaniel “Angel” Manalo, brother of the Executive Minister, his wife Jennie, his sister Lottie Manalo-Hemedez, and 23 others whose only offense was standing with the family that dared to ask that they speak to their own brother, Eduardo V. Manalo. The charge: illegal possession of firearms allegedly found in the compound — charges the family has denied from day one and which supporters have always maintained were fabricated to finish what the expulsions started. Police claimed officers were fired upon; as Isaias Samson Jr. pointedly asked at the time, they “never showed pictures of the ‘wounded’ policemen.” The charges were later upgraded and bail denied. The compound itself was eventually demolished, evidence buried with it.

Nine years later, Bro. Angel remains behind bars. Nine years — for a man whose real offense was being born a Manalo and asking for help for their lives were in danger.

Now hold that beside what we all watched last month: Senator Rodante Marcoleta, the INC’s endorsed candidate, arrested for plunder over 75 million — and receiving treatment so gentle that the Sandiganbayan itself questioned the PNP’s VIP handling of him, while the church mobilized thousands to paralyze EDSA on his behalf. A plunder-accused politician gets hospital suites and a church rally. An innocent man’s brother gets nine years without bail. That is not a justice system. That is a franchise.

The Control Group: What Happens When INC Cannot Reach the Judge

Here is where the pattern becomes undeniable — because we have a scientific control. We can watch what happens when the Iglesia Ni Cristo files the very same kind of case in a courtroom it cannot influence: no bloc vote to dangle, no ministers embedded in the police command, no Net25 waiting outside.

United States, 2015. When the church sought a civil harassment restraining order against expelled members Liezl Deocampo in California — expelled for speaking against corruption and discouraging blind donations — Judge Beatriz Gordon of the Orange County Superior Court threw the petition out on October 16, 2015. The conduct did not even meet the legal definition of harassment. As Liezl said afterward, it was the Deocampos who felt harassed — expelled, barred from worship, met with police calls. In America, the church’s intimidation suit could not survive first contact with an impartial judge. The church later hauled other US-based critics into federal court as well — see the docket of Iglesia Ni Cristo v. Cayabyab — with nothing to show for it but legal bills.

Canada, 2018–2025. This is the crown jewel of the pattern, and every Filipino should read it twice. After CBC’s The Fifth Estate aired “Church of Secrets” — a documentary examining financial irregularities, disappearances, and the harassment of the very whistleblowers named above — six Canadian INC congregations sued the CBC, its journalists, and three expelled members for defamation. Seven years later, on February 7, 2025, Justice Kenneth Champagne of the Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba dismissed the entire suit — not on a technicality, but as “an abuse of the process of the court.” The judge found the church had “deliberately failed to comply” with court rules in an “extreme case of repeated non-compliance,” and wrote words that should be carved above the door of the Central Office: “This conduct is unacceptable and reprehensible as it diminishes the court’s integrity.” And then the court ordered the Iglesia Ni Cristo to pay the CBC’s legal costs. The INC appealed — because of course it did — and on May 7, 2026, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal outright. Not sent back for reconsideration. Not partly granted. Dismissed — with the meter on INC’s own legal bills running the whole time.

Read that again, brethren. A first-world court, beyond the reach of the bloc vote, examined how this church litigates — and called it an abuse of process, reprehensible, an insult to the court’s integrity, and sent them the bill.

The same church. The same lawyers’ playbook. The same targets — journalists and expelled members. In Manila, the critics get arrested, jailed, and sued into silence. In Winnipeg and Fullerton, the church gets dismissed and sanctioned. The only variable that changed is impartiality of the referee.

The Paper Trail: What the Documents Prove

I do not ask you to take my word for any of this. The documents exist, and I am publishing the record. Just take note, these numbers are just based on published records and publicly available at the time of this writing, the count will surely continue to rise.

A Canadian federal tribunal has already ruled on this machinery. On November 3, 2017, the Refugee Protection Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (Decision VB6-00988, Member Jesse Davidson) — after a three-day contested hearing in which Canada’s own Minister of Public Safety intervened and cross-examined, and in which INC produced a serving Canadian INC minister as a witness against the claim — accepted Lowell Menorca II’s claim for protection. Read the panel’s findings, at paragraph 27:

“In accepting the claimant’s evidence as credible, the panel finds members of the INC have previously detained the claimant unlawfully and did attempt to have the claimant killed.”

And at paragraph 10, describing how the criminal charge that started it all was manufactured:

“…a local police officer then took the claimant to a secluded area with the intention of shooting him. The claimant was able to successfully plead for his life with this officer, so instead of shooting the claimant, he charged him with possession of the hand grenade they had attempted to kill him with.”

Sit with that sentence. The murder weapon of a failed assassination became the criminal charge. That is what “legal prosecution” means inside the Iglesia’s system — and it is not my characterization; it is the finding of a G7 country’s refugee tribunal. The panel went further (¶29–30): evidence of murdered ex-members was “persuasive with respect to the motivation and capability of the INC to violently silence individuals who speak out”, and “the fact the INC was able to utilize police officers in their efforts to target the claimant increases the risk.” It found (¶33–34) that INC’s power is “derived through its use of marshalling block voting”, that the January 20, 2016 libel arrest “may have been conducted at the behest of the INC”, and that the police station chief who led the arresting team “is identified as an INC member.” Its conclusion (¶39): the claimant “would be unable to avail himself of state protection” in the Philippines. INC even tried to litigate the refugee claim itself — flooding the Board with unsolicited letters from the administration and congregants demanding denial. The Board refused them all and accepted the claim. Even there, they could not help themselves: when they cannot win a case, they try to capture the tribunal.

The barrage is quantified — by a sworn matrix, and by INC’s own publications. The case matrix filed under oath with Canada’s IRB lists forty-four (44) separate jurisdictions where libel complaints were filed against one critic by chapters of SCAN — the church’s own security organization — from Albay to Zambales, with the Philippine Star reporting SCAN members had “sworn to file” up to 99 more, each in their own locality. Study the matrix’s columns and the machinery confesses itself. In venue after venue, the entry under “subpoena/notice served” reads No — the target learned of the cases only when the warrants issued, because the point was never to litigate; it was to ambush. The “source of info” column for most entries reads INC Blogsite and Eagle News — the church’s own media outlets, which tracked and celebrated each warrant like a scoreboard as they issued “one by one” from Regional Trial Courts across the archipelago. Two entries are known only because an INC minister boasted of them in an unsolicited letter to Canada’s refugee board. In Santiago City, Isabela, the warrant came with bail set at Php 120,000 — twelve times the standard Php 10,000 for libel, a figure the record notes is “more appropriate for much graver crimes.” In Imus Cavite, the one “service” of a subpoena was performed on a detainee in a Manila jail cell by an INC lawyer with no authority to serve it. And in Olongapo City, where a prosecutor actually examined one of these complaints at preliminary investigation, it was dismissed for failing to meet the elements of libel and unjust vexation — the very same two rubber weapons now being swung at journalist Marchel Espina a decade later. As Inquirer columnist John Nery wrote at the time in “The Iglesia’s long arm”: “a person or organization (or religion) of means can file a libel case anywhere in the archipelago… to harass an enemy, or wear down his defenses, or drain his finances… A libel case in Lanao del Norte against someone who lives in Quezon City is not legal redress, but pure retaliation.”

And understand why the number of venues is the whole point. Forty-four cases in forty-four courts is not forty-four chances to win — the INC never needed to win even one. It is forty-four hearing calendars, deliberately scattered from Ilocos to Cotabato, on which hearings inevitably get set for overlapping dates. No human being can stand in a Marawi courtroom and a Biñan courtroom on the same morning. Every unavoidable absence ripens into a bench warrant; every bench warrant is a fresh, court-stamped license to arrest and jail the person they want silenced — “lawfully” this time, with the judiciary itself as the instrument. That is how you convert a court system into a trap. The target must find and pay a lawyer in every venue, buy passage to hearings scheduled to be missed, and post bail after bail after bail — Php 20,000 in Manila here, Php 120,000 in Santiago City there — while the complainants on SCAN’s roster pay nothing, risk nothing, and in most venues never even served notice. Absence is the product. The warrant is the point. Guilt or innocence never enters the equation — which is precisely why, in the handful of venues where a prosecutor actually weighed the evidence, the cases died on contact. And dwell on what the number 117 actually demonstrates: every one of those filings required a complainant willing to sign, a lawyer willing to file, and a courtroom to receive it — from Ilocos Sur to Surigao del Sur to Orange County to Winnipeg. No individual has that reach. Only an organization that can mobilize its members like a legal militia, on command, nationwide and across oceans can — and that capacity, not any single case, is the threat.

The financial drain is the design, and it is documented. Bail of Php 20,000 posted in Manila for two Mindanao libel suits; bail of Php 120,000 set in Santiago City; airfare and lawyers in every province where a SCAN chapter filed; and when the target flees abroad, the meter keeps running — six sample monthly invoices from just one stretch of the California litigation (June 2019–March 2020) total over US$7,500, a fraction of what seven years of defending a single INC-lawyer lawsuit actually cost a refugee family. The sworn record notes the grenade case went from prosecutor’s resolution to filings in two different courts in a single day — in a court system where ordinary Filipinos wait years. That is what judicial capture looks like at the retail level.

And when the drain runs the other way, they quit. In San Pedro v. Doe a/k/a “Antonio Ebangelista” (Orange County Superior Court, Case No. 30-2017-00964285), the INC lawyer identified in these pages as one of the church’s legal “go-to guys” sued this author for defamation in December 2017. On July 10, 2019, Judge Gregory H. Lewis entered costs “in favor of Specially Appearing Defendant Lowell Menorca II and against Plaintiff Rommel V. San Pedro.” The Court of Appeal gave San Pedro his jurisdictional ruling in 2020 — and then, with the road to trial open, he filed a Request for Dismissal of his entire action on April 16, 2024. Six and a half years of litigation, and the plaintiff walked away from his own case. They never wanted a verdict. Verdicts require evidence. They wanted the process — the years, the invoices, the fear.

The scoreboard, then, in courts beyond the bloc vote’s reach: the Deocampo harassment petition — dismissed. The Fairfax County libel suit against the brother who reported INC to the IRS — dismissed. San Pedro v. Menorca — costs against San Pedro, then self-dismissed. INC v. CBC — dismissed as an abuse of process, with costs against INC — and the appeal dismissed again in May 2026. The IRB pressure campaign — refused, claim accepted. Five engagements. Zero victories. In every single one, the only thing INC’s litigation achieved was a paper trail proving what its litigation is for.

The full registry — every publicly known case, target, court, and outcome, with the primary documents cited — is published alongside this article as a downloadable spreadsheet. One hundred seventeen — and counting — individual prosecutions and filings across three countries. Known final convictions of the church’s critics: zero.

Three Judges, Three Verdicts, One Persecutor

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds — and now the harvest is a shelf of certified Canadian government decisions that name the Iglesia Ni Cristo, in writing, as the reason its critics cannot go home.

Because here is what the Sanggunian does not want you to know: Canada did not reach its conclusion about the INC once. It reached it three separate times, before three different adjudicators, in three independent proceedings — and each time, Canada’s own government lawyers were in the room arguing the other side.

March 17, 2017 — Rovic Canono. Member Ron Yamauchi of the Refugee Protection Division heard the claim of the man INC’s machinery had arrested at his Eastwood condominium with Net25 cameras waiting. Remember what that case looked like in Manila: a “domestic complaint” from an estranged wife, prosecuted by the INC legal department’s own Wilfredo Santos. Now read what an impartial judge concluded after Canada’s Minister of Public Safety intervened against Canono and then withdrew at the hearing. The decision records that Canono was “targeted with harassment allegations, a number [of] liable suits, including one filed by the INC leader himself, and falsely charged with insulting and assaulting his wife… also falsely charged with resisting arrest.” Three weeks in detention awaiting bail, “held in extremely abusive conditions under the eye of INC affiliated management and inmates.” Officers who “insinuated that he could be beheaded or set up as a drug user.” A resisting-arrest allegation the Member called “wholly trumped up.” And the panel put on the record precisely the thesis of this article — that the cases against him were “factually baseless and filed only to harass him and drain his resources” — before describing what the whole world is clearly witnessing: the “Mafia-like influence that the INC appears to be having in Philippine politics, its military and judiciary.”

Then Member Yamauchi wrote the sentence that should end every debate about whether this is a “religious dispute”:

“There is no possibility of state protection because the state in this case is the agent of persecution.”

A church so fused with the machinery of the state that a G7 tribunal could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. Canono was declared a Convention refugee — persecuted, in the treaty sense of the word, for daring to speak.

November 3, 2017 — Lowell Menorca II. The decision quoted at length above (VB6-00988): unlawfully detained, an attempt made on his life, the murder-weapon grenade converted into his criminal charge, police mobilized “at the behest of the INC.” Claim accepted.

June 8, 2018 — Fredisminda Robosa Menorca. Read that name and understand what this church is. She was seventy-four years old — a mother, born in 1944, guilty of nothing but raising a son who told the truth. Member Chad Prowse of the RPD (File VB6-03948) heard her claim on May 28, 2018 and determined that she, too, “is a person in need of protection.” When a septuagenarian grandmother qualifies for international protection from a church, the word for that organization is not “misunderstood.” The word is persecutor.

Three members. Three files. Three certified decisions — 2017, 2017, 2018 — each reached with Canada’s own Minister’s counsel testing the evidence, each finding the same agent of harm. This is no longer one man’s story. It is a documented, adjudicated, cross-corroborated pattern, and the documents are in our archive.

So when the brethren are told from the pulpit that the expelled are merely “bitter,” ask them this: bitter people do not get three Canadian tribunals, an Orange County judge, a Fairfax County judge, a Manitoba justice, the QC Prosecutor’s Office, the Commission on Human Rights, and the world’s press-freedom watchdogs all reading the same evidence and reaching the same verdict. The gavel has slammed on the INC’s litigation machine on two continents now — and it will keep slamming, because the seeds they buried keep coming up as witnesses.

The Pattern, In Numbers

The registry at a glance	Count
Individual prosecutions, cases, charges, petitions and appeals filed by INC, its officers, members, or proxies since 2005 — each person charged, in each venue, counted once	117 and counting
— filed in the Philippines	108
— filed in the United States	6
— filed in Canada	3
Filings dismissed, junked, self-dismissed, or that backfired outright	28
Filings that simply never produced a conviction — abandoned, fizzled, mooted	58
Filings still ongoing (the Tandang Sora 30 + the Espina case)	31
Known final convictions of any INC critic	0
Jurisdictions with documented SCAN libel complaints against one critic (sworn matrix)	44
Additional libel complaints SCAN publicly vowed to file	99
Venues where a subpoena or notice was served BEFORE a warrant issued	almost none
Bail set in Santiago City vs the standard bail for libel (PHP)	120,000 vs 10,000
Days from prosecutor’s resolution to filings in two courts (planted-grenade case)	1
Years the San Pedro defamation suit ran before the plaintiff quit his own case (Dec 2017 – Apr 2024)	6.5
Years the INC v. CBC suit ran, from filing through its failed appeal (Feb 2019 – May 2026)	7.2
INC victories in courts beyond the bloc vote’s reach (USA & Canada)	0 of 5

The Ledger: All 117 Prosecutions, Filings, and Appeals, In One Table

What follows is the full ledger — not campaigns, not clusters, but every individual prosecution, case, charge, petition and appeal, one row for every person charged in every venue where the Iglesia Ni Cristo, its officers, its members, or its proxies filed. Scroll it. Feel its length. Forty-four rows of it are one man’s libel cases alone; thirty rows of it are the human beings swept up in a single dawn raid. This is what it looks like when a church can mobilize complainants like a legal militia — and note, as you scroll, what the last column never says: convicted.

#	Filed	Accused / Target	Action / Charge — Venue	Status / Outcome
1	2005–14	Bro. Eli Soriano (Ang Dating Daan)	Libel (INC-member complainants) — case 1 of at least 2 documented — RTC (per Oct 2014 records: two courts denied motions), PH	Remarks ruled NOT libelous (2014); died in exile 2021
2	2005–14	Bro. Eli Soriano (Ang Dating Daan)	Libel / related criminal complaint — case 2 of at least 2 documented — RTC (second court, per Oct 2014 records), PH	No conviction; decades of further complaints undercounted
3	2015	Isaias T. Samson Jr.	Libel (case 1) — Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office, PH	JUNKED Feb 2016 — no malice
4	2015	Isaias T. Samson Jr.	Libel (case 2) — Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office, PH	JUNKED Feb 2016 — no malice
5	2015	Bro. Eliodoro ‘Joy’ Yuson	Libel — 1st count (Jul 31, 2015) — Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office, PH	JUNKED Feb 2016 — no malice
6	2015	Bro. Eliodoro ‘Joy’ Yuson	Libel — 2nd count (Jul 31, 2015) — Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office, PH	JUNKED Feb 2016 — no malice
7	2015	Bro. Eliodoro ‘Joy’ Yuson	Libel — Nov 2015 refiling (same statements) — QC / Biñan (warrant per Eagle News), PH	No conviction
8	2015	Bro. Roel Rosal	Libel — Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office, PH	JUNKED Feb 2016 — no malice
9	2015	Marc Jason Cayabyab (Inquirer.net reporter)	Libel — for reporting whistleblower allegations — Philippines, PH	No known conviction
10	2015	John Nery (Inquirer.net editor-in-chief)	Libel — for reporting whistleblower allegations — Philippines, PH	No known conviction
11	2015	Abel Ulanday (Inquirer.net publisher)	Libel — for reporting whistleblower allegations — Philippines, PH	No known conviction
12	2015	Lowell Menorca II	Grave threats — via planted grenade, filed in ONE day — MTC Dasmariñas, Cavite, PH	WITHDRAWN/DISMISSED
13	2015	Lowell Menorca II	Illegal possession of explosive (RA 8294) — the grenade used in the attempt on his life — RTC Imus, Cavite, PH	DISMISSED (Dismissal Order on record; IRB ¶22, ¶32)
14	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 1 of 44 (one televised statement) — Albay, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
15	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 2 of 44 (one televised statement) — Aparri, Cagayan, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
16	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 3 of 44 (one televised statement) — Bacoor, Cavite, PH	complaint copy never served [source of record: Prosecutor’s Office, Imus]
17	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 4 of 44 (one televised statement) — Biñan City, Laguna, PH	warrant issued per Eagle News [source of record: FB: Have a Heart; Eagle News]
18	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 5 of 44 (one televised statement) — Bohol, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
19	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 6 of 44 (one televised statement) — Bulacan, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
20	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 7 of 44 (one televised statement) — Cagayan, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
21	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 8 of 44 (one televised statement) — Cagayan South, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
22	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 9 of 44 (one televised statement) — Cagayan West, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
23	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 10 of 44 (one televised statement) — Camarines Sur, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
24	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 11 of 44 (one televised statement) — Capiz, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
25	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 12 of 44 (one televised statement) — Catanduanes, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
26	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 13 of 44 (one televised statement) — Cebu, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
27	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 14 of 44 (one televised statement) — Ilocos Sur, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
28	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 15 of 44 (one televised statement) — Imus, Cavite, PH	subpoena ‘served’ on detainee in Manila City Jail by INC lawyer with no authority [source of record: —]
29	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 16 of 44 (one televised statement) — Iriga City, Camarines Sur, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
30	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 17 of 44 (one televised statement) — Isabela, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
31	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 18 of 44 (one televised statement) — Kidapawan, Cotabato, PH	warrant per INC minister Guinto [source of record: Guinto letter to IRB]
32	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 19 of 44 (one televised statement) — Katapagan, Lanao del Norte, PH	warrant served in Manila City Jail [source of record: FB: Cutting Classes]
33	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 20 of 44 (one televised statement) — Laguna, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite; Eagle News]
34	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 21 of 44 (one televised statement) — Las Piñas, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
35	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 22 of 44 (one televised statement) — Makati, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
36	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 23 of 44 (one televised statement) — Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, PH	warrant served in Manila City Jail; P20,000 bail posted (with Lanao del Norte) [source of record: FB: Cutting Classes]
37	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 24 of 44 (one televised statement) — Mindoro, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
38	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 25 of 44 (one televised statement) — Misamis Oriental, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
39	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 26 of 44 (one televised statement) — Mt. Province, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
40	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 27 of 44 (one televised statement) — Maguindanao, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
41	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 28 of 44 (one televised statement) — Muntinlupa, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
42	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 29 of 44 (one televised statement) — Nueva Ecija, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
43	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 30 of 44 (one televised statement) — Nueva Ecija Northeast, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
44	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 31 of 44 (one televised statement) — Nueva Ecija South, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
45	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 32 of 44 (one televised statement) — Olongapo City, PH	DISMISSED at preliminary investigation — failed elements of libel AND unjust vexation [source of record: Atty. Trixie Angeles]
46	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 33 of 44 (one televised statement) — Palawan North, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
47	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 34 of 44 (one televised statement) — Palawan South, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
48	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 35 of 44 (one televised statement) — Parañaque, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
49	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 36 of 44 (one televised statement) — Pasay, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
50	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 37 of 44 (one televised statement) — Quezon, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
51	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 38 of 44 (one televised statement) — Quirino, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
52	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 39 of 44 (one televised statement) — San Jose, Nueva Ecija, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
53	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 40 of 44 (one televised statement) — Santiago City, Isabela, PH	warrant with bail P120,000 vs standard P10,000 [source of record: Shown by Immigration at NAIA]
54	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 41 of 44 (one televised statement) — Sorsogon, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: Eagle News]
55	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 42 of 44 (one televised statement) — Taguig, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
56	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 43 of 44 (one televised statement) — Tandag City, Surigao del Sur, PH	warrant per INC minister Guinto [source of record: Guinto letter to IRB]
57	2015–16	Lowell Menorca II	Criminal libel — SCAN chapter complaint 44 of 44 (one televised statement) — Zambales, PH	no subpoena/notice ever served; no conviction [source of record: INC Blogsite]
58	2015	Lowell Menorca II	Kidnapping / serious illegal detention rap (complainants coerced, per their own daughter) — RTC, PH	Collapsed; INC filed voluntary dismissal
59	2015	Jingky Menorca (wife)	Kidnapping / serious illegal detention rap (same complaint) — RTC, PH	Collapsed; INC filed voluntary dismissal
60	2015	Lowell & Jingky Menorca	Petition for habeas corpus #1 (Yanson parents) — RTC, PH	DISMISSED 4 Dec 2015
61	2016	Lowell Menorca II	Named respondent — habeas corpus petition #2 (Yanson parents, refiled after Menorca spoke to international media) — Court of Appeals / RTC, PH	Court ruled FOR respondents 8 Jun 2016
62	2016	Jingky Menorca (wife)	Named respondent — habeas corpus petition #2 (Yanson parents, refiled after Menorca spoke to international media) — Court of Appeals / RTC, PH	Court ruled FOR respondents 8 Jun 2016
63	2016	Jungko Otsuka (sister-in-law)	Named respondent — habeas corpus petition #2 (Yanson parents, refiled after Menorca spoke to international media) — Court of Appeals / RTC, PH	Court ruled FOR respondents 8 Jun 2016
64	2016	Anthony Menorca (brother)	Named respondent — habeas corpus petition #2 (Yanson parents, refiled after Menorca spoke to international media) — Court of Appeals / RTC, PH	Court ruled FOR respondents 8 Jun 2016
65	2016	Rovic Canono (friend)	Named respondent — habeas corpus petition #2 (Yanson parents, refiled after Menorca spoke to international media) — Court of Appeals / RTC, PH	Court ruled FOR respondents 8 Jun 2016
66	2016	Lowell Menorca II	Resisting arrest, direct assault, obstruction — from CHR-flagged Jan 20, 2016 arrest by INC-member officers — Manila, PH	No conviction; CHR raised red flags; De Lima: ‘highly irregular’
67	2016	Jingky Menorca (wife)	Charged for DEMANDING A WARRANT from the arresting officers — Manila, PH	No conviction
68	2016	Felixberto Eslava (bodyguard)	Direct assault / obstruction (same incident) — Manila, PH	No conviction
69	2015–16	Bro. Lito Fruto	Libel (case 1) — Caloocan, PH	No known conviction; protracted bail as punishment
70	2015–16	Bro. Lito Fruto	Libel (case 2 — ‘inundated with libel cases’) — Caloocan, PH	No known conviction
71	2015–16	Bro. Lito Fruto	Fabricated rape-of-a-minor charge — Caloocan, PH	No known conviction
72	2015–16	Counsel of Bro. Lito Fruto	Criminal charge vs his own lawyer — Caloocan, PH	No known conviction
73	2016	Bro. Farley De Castro	Copyright infringement — Philippines, PH	No known conviction
74	2015–16	Rovic Canono	Civil suit — filed by the INC leader himself (per IRB findings) — Philippines, PH	IRB: suits vs him incl. ‘one filed by the INC leader himself’; Canono declared Convention refugee Mar 2017
75	2015–16	Rovic Canono	Additional liable suit(s) / harassment allegations (per IRB findings) — Philippines, PH	IRB found him ‘targeted with harassment allegations, a number [of] liable suits’
76	2016	Rovic Canono	Charge of insulting/assaulting his wife (VAWC) — prosecuted by INC Legal Dept’s Wilfredo Santos; Net25 pre-positioned at arrest — Quezon City, PH	IRB: ‘FALSELY CHARGED’; 3 weeks detained in ‘extremely abusive conditions under the eye of INC affiliated management and inmates’
77	2016	Rovic Canono	Resisting arrest — Quezon City, PH	IRB: ‘wholly trumped up’
78	2017	Felix Nathaniel ‘Angel’ Manalo II	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 1 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	ONGOING — Angel Manalo detained 9+ years, bail denied
79	2017	Jennie Manalo (wife)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 2 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	ONGOING — see case record
80	2017	Lolita ‘Lottie’ Manalo-Hemedez (sister)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 3 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	ONGOING — see case record
81	2017	Co-accused #4 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 4 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
82	2017	Co-accused #5 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 5 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
83	2017	Co-accused #6 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 6 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
84	2017	Co-accused #7 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 7 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
85	2017	Co-accused #8 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 8 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
86	2017	Co-accused #9 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 9 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
87	2017	Co-accused #10 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 10 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
88	2017	Co-accused #11 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 11 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
89	2017	Co-accused #12 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 12 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
90	2017	Co-accused #13 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 13 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
91	2017	Co-accused #14 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 14 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
92	2017	Co-accused #15 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 15 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
93	2017	Co-accused #16 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 16 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
94	2017	Co-accused #17 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 17 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
95	2017	Co-accused #18 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 18 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
96	2017	Co-accused #19 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 19 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
97	2017	Co-accused #20 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 20 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
98	2017	Co-accused #21 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 21 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
99	2017	Co-accused #22 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 22 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
100	2017	Co-accused #23 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 23 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
101	2017	Co-accused #24 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 24 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
102	2017	Co-accused #25 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 25 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
103	2017	Co-accused #26 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 26 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
104	2017	Co-accused #27 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 27 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
105	2017	Co-accused #28 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 28 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
106	2017	Co-accused #29 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 29 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
107	2017	Co-accused #30 (Tandang Sora 30; name withheld in reports)	Illegal possession of firearms/explosives — accused 30 of 30, dawn raid at 36 Tandang Sora (family maintains evidence was planted; no photos of ‘wounded’ officers ever produced) — Quezon City RTC, PH	See case record
108	2015	Liezl Deocampo	Civil harassment petition + TRO (INC; counsel Rommel San Pedro) — Orange County Superior Court (Fullerton), USA	DISMISSED 16 Oct 2015 — didn’t meet legal threshold
109	2015	Julius Deocampo	Civil harassment petition + TRO (same filing) — Orange County Superior Court (Fullerton), USA	DISMISSED 16 Oct 2015
110	2016	‘Bro. Vincent’ (reported INC to the IRS)	Libel — Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Virginia, USA	DISMISSED 28 Mar 2016
111	2016	Anonymous critic-bloggers	Subpoena to WordPress to unmask them (Samson v. Reyes) — US federal subpoena practice, USA	Part of harassment record (BOC Attachment #135)
112	2017	‘Antonio Ebangelista’ / Lowell Menorca II	Defamation & false light — INC lawyer Rommel San Pedro — Orange County Superior Court, Case 30-2017-00964285, USA	Costs ordered VS San Pedro (10 Jul 2019); plaintiff self-dismissed entire action 16 Apr 2024 after 6.5 years
113	2018	US-based critic (Cayabyab)	Federal defamation suit — INC v. Cayabyab — US District Court, C.D. Cal., 5:18-cv-00561, USA	No known judgment for INC
114	2019	CBC, its journalists + 3 expelled members	Defamation over ‘Church of Secrets’ — six Canadian INC congregations as plaintiffs — Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba, Canada	DISMISSED 7 Feb 2025 — ‘an abuse of the process of the court’; costs VS INC
115	2025	CBC et al. (same defendants)	APPEAL of the dismissal — Court of Appeal (Manitoba), Canada	APPEAL DISMISSED 7 May 2026
116	2016–17	Lowell Menorca II (refugee claimant)	Campaign of unsolicited letters to Canada’s IRB to sink the claim; INC-member witness produced at hearing — Immigration and Refugee Board (RPD), Vancouver, Canada	BACKFIRED — letters refused; claim ACCEPTED 3 Nov 2017
117	2025	Marchel Espina (journalist)	Criminal ‘unjust vexation’ — complainant Pedro Castillo, INC district supervising minister, over a Dec 2024 op-ed — Batangas court, PH	ONGOING — condemned by HRW, CPJ, WAN-IFRA

This Is an Attack on Democracy Itself

Let us stop pretending this is a religious dispute. When a religious corporation can have a critic arrested with its own lawyers prosecuting and its own network filming; when its endorsed senator receives VIP treatment that an anti-graft court has to publicly question; when a journalist faces years of criminal hearings over an opinion column; when the DOJ buries every complaint against the Sanggunian while fast-tracking every complaint from it; and when a man sits in jail for nine years on charges his family has always called fabricated — that is not church-state separation. That is state capture by a church.

The mechanism is no mystery. It is the bloc vote — the promise of millions of commanded ballots, delivered in exchange for appointments, protection, and impunity. It is the reason presidents go to the Central Office in Quezon City for that precious photo-op with EVM and kiss the ring, why senators attend Central’s anniversaries, why police generals wear their INC membership like a badge, and why prosecutors know which complaints to lose. The bloc vote is not religious freedom. It is a corruption engine — the root system from which every case in this article grew. Even now, with the church’s street power visibly collapsing — 14,000 at a rally where they once summoned 600,000, and a government that finally refused to blink — the machinery of legal harassment grinds on against Marchel Espina in a Batangas courtroom.

So we say it plainly, and we say it again, and we will not stop saying it:

Free Bro. Angel Manalo. We renew our call, and we ask every reader to renew theirs — sign and share the petitions demanding justice for Bro. Angel, Ka Jennie, Ka Lottie, and the Tandang Sora 30 (here and here). Nine years of pre-judgment imprisonment while plunder suspects get hospital beds is not justice delayed — it is justice mocked.

Outlaw the bloc vote. Congress must criminalize the organized coercion of religious members’ ballots and the trading of commanded votes for state favors. No democracy can survive a church that owns its referees. Until the bloc vote dies, every journalist, every whistleblower, every expelled brother and sister who speaks the truth will keep facing what Espina, Samson, Menorca, Canono, Soriano, the Deocampos, and the Manalos have faced.

Stand with Marchel Espina. She is simply a Filipino journalist who told the truth about a church meddling in politics — and for that, a minister of that church is trying to make her a criminal. If they can do this to her, with the whole world’s press freedom organizations watching, imagine what they do to the ordinary member in the pews who merely asks where the offerings go.

The courts of Canada have already told us what this church’s litigation really is: an abuse of process, unacceptable and reprehensible. It is long past time the courts of the Philippines — and the Filipino people — said the same.

They filed cases to make us silent. This is precisely why we should be silent-no-more.

Take Away Their Weapons: Decriminalize Libel and “Unjust Vexation”

Every case in the registry above was made possible by two rusted colonial-era weapons that still sit in the Revised Penal Code: criminal libel and the catch-all offense of “unjust vexation.” Neither belongs in the law of a democracy, and the world has already said so. As far back as 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Committee — ruling in a Filipino journalist’s case — found the Philippines’ criminal libel law incompatible with freedom of expression under the ICCPR, and its General Comment 34 calls on states to decriminalize defamation altogether. Instead of listening, Congress went the other way: the Cybercrime Prevention Act raised the penalties and gave every SCAN chapter a fresh weapon with a longer blade.

Understand what these laws actually do in practice. They let a religious corporation with 40 complainants on retainer turn every provincial courthouse into a checkpoint. They let a district minister criminalize an opinion column for the price of a filing fee. They convert the slowest justice system in Southeast Asia — 600,000 backlogged cases, by Freedom House’s count — into a bespoke punishment machine for whoever the powerful want punished, because for the powerful, and only for the powerful, the wheels turn in a single day. Decriminalize libel and abolish “unjust vexation,” and the INC’s entire domestic lawfare arsenal collapses into what it should have been all along: a civil complaint, filed at the complainant’s own expense, decided on evidence, with costs awarded against abusers — exactly the regime under which the INC has lost every single time in North America.

So this site now calls, alongside the calls above, for three reforms — and we ask every reader, every journalist, every legislator with a spine to carry them: (1) Decriminalize libel and repeal “unjust vexation,” as the UN has demanded of the Philippines for over a decade. (2) Enact an anti-SLAPP law with teeth — mandatory early dismissal and mandatory costs against strategic harassment suits, the very mechanism that let Canada bill the INC for its abuse. (3) Outlaw the bloc vote — the corruption engine that makes prosecutors, police chiefs, and judges afraid of a church. Unless the government, the justice system, or the Filipino people themselves act, the orange bar on that chart will not stay at one. The machine is already reloading.

~ Antonio Ramirez Ebangelista

---

Sources: Crux — Global watchdogs defend Filipino journalist · Inquirer — DOJ junks expelled minister’s suit · Inquirer — Menorca confirms abduction · Inquirer — 3rd libel case vs Menorca · Rappler — Ex-INC refugee claimants · Rappler — Anti-Iglesia blogger arrested · Soriano libel ruling · Inquirer USA — Tandang Sora 30 arrests · Inquirer — Gun raps upgraded, bail denied · Inquirer — Orange County court nixes INC charges · CourtListener — INC v. Cayabyab · Inquirer — Canada court junks INC suit vs CBC · GMA — INC defamation case vs CBC junked · Philstar — Marcoleta moved to Payatas jail · GMA — Government did not blink