Shivani Gadhavi –
Published On: December 03, 2021 at 20:00 IST
On 3rd December, 2021 a Court of Appeals in the Philippines granted permission to the winner of Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2021 Maria Ressa, to go to Oslo to receive her Prize in person, as before she was restricted to travel due pending cases against her.
Maria Ressa, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Rappler which is a digital News Organization based in Manila, the capital of Philippines, had received the Nobel Peace Prize in October, 2021 along with a Russian investigative officer Dmitri A. Muratov.
Ms. Ressa is well appreciated for her organization’s investigations against the president of Philippines Rodrigo Duterte and his five-year drug war in the Nation. The President, Rodrigo Duterte, has filed several criminal lawsuits against Ms. Ressa which include tax evasion and cyber libel, due to which she needed a special permission to travel.
In the order passed in the afternoon of 3rd December, 2021 Ms. Ressa was granted the special permission to travel to Oslo, Norway and attend the prize receiving ceremony on 10th December, 2021 from 8th December, 2021 to 13th December, 2021.
The Order comes after a lot of pressure from International Institutions such as the United Nations which showed its concerns over the restrictions placed upon Ms. Ressa by the Government and wished for her to receive her prize in Oslo, Norway.
The Advocate for Ms. Ressa, Ted Te, stated after the order was passed, “We’d like to think that the Court of Appeals reached the resolution independently of any public opinion, But the Court of Appeals is composed of human beings who are aware of what’s going on. So, of course, anything they read could possibly have an influence on how they think.”