MANILA - A group of human rights lawyers on Tuesday slammed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to revoke the incorporation papers of news website Rappler, saying the move is a prime example of "outrageous legalism."

The Center for International Law (CenterLaw) said Rappler was denied due process when the corporate regulator decided to order the news website's shut down instead of offering an opportunity to correct the mass media entity's ownership structure.

"Thus, at best, the SEC’s decision is a prime example of outrageous legalism blind to law's greater purposes; at worst, it is one cloaked with unconstitutional motivations," CenterLaw said in a statement.

The SEC on Monday said Rappler Inc. violated constitutional and foreign equity restrictions in mass media, saying it "sold control to foreigners."

• Rappler's incorporation papers revoked by SEC

• SEC chief says to defend Rappler ruling 'to the hilt'

Responding to the SEC ruling, Rappler Chief Executive Officer Maria Ressa in a press conference said the decision did not go through due process and labeled it as harassment.

"They didn't go through due process. The en banc, essentially, issued an order to shut us down without giving us the opportunity to respond to what the special panel found. It wasn't a normal process," she said.

"I guess this is the last part of the kind of harassment that journalists have had in the last year or so. In Rappler, it began a year and a half ago," Ressa added.

• Rappler cries harassment over SEC closure order

CenterLaw emphasized that setting aside Rappler's alleged failure to comply with constitutional restrictions on foreign ownership of Philippine media entities, "free expression" remains "at the topmost rungs of constitutional freedoms."

"The same Constitution that prescribes restrictions on ownership of Philippine mass media is also the very Constitution that has placed free expression at the topmost rungs of constitutional freedoms," it said.

"If the annals of constitutional adjudication were to give an able guide, since press freedom is a preferred constitutional value in the Philippines, what the SEC should have done was to give Rappler an opportunity to correct its ownership structure. Instead, the SEC got down to business right away with guns blazing," it added.

Centerlaw also criticized Solicitor General Jose Calida's alleged investigation into the ownership of Rappler, saying it was a "collateral attack – restraining a known critic of the government’s drug war, not by directly censoring it but by cancelling its corporate registration."

"That this move to cancel its corporate registration is linked to the President’s public statements disparaging Rappler is proven by the fact that it was no less than the Office of the Solicitor General that so moved," it said.

Malacañang has said President Rodrigo Duterte, who has hit Rappler's critical reporting, has nothing to do with the shutdown order.

• Did SolGen seek SEC probe into Rappler?

• Roque: President has nothing to do with Rappler closure order, decries harassment claim