#FreeFrenchieMaeCumpio: The rising star of Philippine journalism has now spent five years in jail
Investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio has now been jailed for five years on trumped-up terrorism charges. Leading Philippine journalists and media organisations have joined Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in calling for her immediate release.
On 7 February 2025, investigative journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio will have spent five years languishing behind bars in the eastern Philippines. Arrested in 2020, she is accused of "financing terrorism" and "illegal possession of firearms" — charges that could keep her locked up for up to 40 more years. As Johnray Luciano, secretary-general of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines, told RSF, the case is a "travesty of justice."
The circumstances of her arrest raise serious concerns: while the military claims to have discovered a firearm and grenade in a raid on her home, investigations by human rights organisations concluded that the items were planted by the military to incriminate Frenchie Mae Cumpio, who was just 21 years old at the time. What’s more, it took authorities four years to build a case against her — an excessive delay that smacks of an unfair judicial process.
"The reason why she’s in jail is because she’s a journalist," says John Nery, a columnist for the news site Rappler. Prior to her arrest, Cumpio reported on abuses committed by the military and police in the Eastern Visayas region for a programme she hosted on the local radio station Aksyon Radyo-Tacloban DYVL. She is also the director of Eastern Vista, a news site that is part of Altermidya, a network of independent media outlets committed to promoting the stories of marginalised people in the Philippines.
"Frenchie Mae Cumpio is a talented journalist who, through her unwavering courage, embodies the future of investigative journalism in the Philippines. Her detention on spurious terrorism charges is merely a ploy to intimidate her fellow journalists and deter them from exposing military abuses. We call on the Ministry of Justice to drop the charges against her and end the outrageous legal proceedings that have dragged on for five years.
Len Olea, editor-in-chief of the online news site Bulatlat, explained that under the Marcos administration, “the use of terrorism [accusations] is still being used to justify the harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders, including journalists”. Like Frenchie Mae Cumpio, Filipino journalists who investigate subjects that bristle the military authorities often fall victim to“red-tagging,” a strategy that consists of labelling them as subversive agents and terrorists.
"With every day that Frenchie Mae and independent journalists are deprived of their freedom and burdened by trumped-up charges, Filipinos remain deprived of the full realisation of our right to expression. Our call to free Frenchie Mae thus goes hand in hand with our assertion for genuine press freedom and our most fundamental right for free expression,” said Rhea Padilla, news director from Altermidya, with whom Frenchie Mae Cumpio collaborated.
With 204 journalists killed since the nation became a democracy in 1986 (according to the Presidential Task Force on Media Security), the Philippines remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists and press freedom defenders. In 2024, the country ranked 134th out of 180 in the RSF World Press Freedom Index.
