If press freedom is, as the late American diplomat Madeleine Albright once said, the “heartbeat of democracy,” then the conviction of community journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio suggests that democracy in the Philippines now palpitates under strain.

On Thursday, Cumpio, former executive director of the alternative news outfit Eastern Vista, became the “first journalist in the world to be convicted of terrorism financing,” according to Bi Lih Yi, Asia Program Coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Judge Georgina Perez of the Tacloban City Regional Trial Court Branch 45 sentenced Cumpio and Mariel Domequil, finance officer of the Rural Missionaries Philippines Eastern Visayas, to a prison term of 12 to 18 years after finding them guilty of violating the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012.