UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations on Monday urged the Philippines to allow Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa to travel to Norway next month to accept the prize.

Ressa https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nobel-prize-shines-light-dark-time-philippines-ressa-2021-10-08, the first Nobel Prize winner from the Philippines, shared Peace Prize with Russian investigative journalist Dmitry Muratov, a move widely seen as an endorsement of free speech rights, which are criticized around the world.

Ressa has asked the government for permission to travel to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10.

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the UN was “very concerned” by the travel restrictions imposed on Ressa by the government.

“We urge the government of the Philippines to immediately lift such restrictions and allow it to travel to Oslo,” Dujarric told reporters in New York.

The license of Ressa’s news site, Rappler, has been suspended and it has been prosecuted for various reasons. Her supporters say she has been targeted for her scrutiny of government policies, including a bloody war on drugs launched by President Rodrigo Duterte.

The Philippines’ ranking in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index has dropped two notches to 138 out of 180 countries, and the Committee to Protect Journalists ranks the Philippines seventh in the world in its Impunity Index, which tracks the deaths of members of the media whose killers are at large. .

The government denies harassing the media and claims that all problems faced by organizations are legal and not political. He says he believes in freedom of expression.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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