When things got desperate my parents signed letters. Letters which could cost them their safety and freedom. But they felt that not to sign was to acquiesce in the immorality of the regime when it arrested people for simply speaking their mind.

This was in the Soviet Union, during the late 1970s, in the frosty years of the Cold War. Public letters addressed to the West were a desperate form of resistance: if one could raise enough noise among the powerful perhaps they could lobby for a political prisoner’s release; if there was enough public outcry, maybe the Soviet leadership could be shamed into softening a sentence.

Forty years later, as I sat down to write a similar letter in the face of a regime’s intimidation, I found myself at a loss. Though I face none of the dangers that my parents did, I also had no idea who and what to appeal to — or how. Who was I to address the letter to? Which powerful people will help a dissident? Are the rights fought for so bitterly in the 20^th century still meaningful? What can a letter ever hope to achieve?

As punishment for doing her job well, Maria Ressa now faces trumped up charges of tax evasion. She risks imprisonment.

The letter I wanted to write was in support of the journalist Maria Ressa and her pioneering news site “Rappler,” which has won millions of readers in the Philippines since it started up in 2011. Rappler have been attacked for their thorough reporting on the extrajudicial killings carried out by the government of President Rodrigo Duterte.