CAGAYAN DE ORO – Two members of a progressive youth organization slammed the alleged incidents of surveillance by suspected state agents in Cagayan de Oro, stressing that this type of harassment won’t stop their activism given the country’s situation amid corruption.

The Kabataan Party-list Northern Mindanao Region (KPL-NMR) released an alert on November 5 that two of its members, Neil Collins Velez and Cyrus Adrian Rom, were allegedly being surveilled. The first incident occurred on November 4, when Rom noticed three uniformed policemen who followed him to a cafe in Corrales Street.

Rom, former chairperson of Anakbayan Cebu, told Bulatlat that he first saw the three policemen around 7 a.m. in Plaza Divisoria, where he withdrew cash. He said they were the exact police personnel he saw outside a mall on C.M. Recto Avenue and around 6 p.m. outside a cafe in Corrales Street where KPL members gathered for a meeting. 

He said this was the third incident of surveillance he reported, of which two occurred in the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu in Cebu.

Read: Groups decry surveillance of KMU office in Southern Mindanao

Velez, on the other hand, was allegedly followed on November 5 by an unidentified man on a motorcycle from near his residence in Barangay Macasandig to Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, where he is studying. He vividly remembered the man’s face, asserting that this was the same person who allegedly tailed his mother on November 3.

The student activist was convinced that he was tailed by a suspected state agent outside the university after the man took his phone and was seemingly taking photos of him. He reckoned that it has something to do with his activism and his affiliation with a progressive group that has been repeatedly red-tagged.

This prompted the family to lodge a complaint with the police. “I won’t deny that I felt frightened that time,” Velez, KPL-NMR coordinator, told Bulatlat in an interview.

Prior to this, Velez said individuals who introduced themselves as military personnel visited their residence three times this year, asking the names of people who recruited him to the Kabataan Party-list and if he was a member of the New People’s Army. But he refused to participate. This could be the reason, he said, why his mother experienced the alleged surveillance. 

He added that his mother contacted one of the military personnel and asked if they were the ones behind the alleged tailing, but they denied it. After KPL-NMR released the alert, the said military agent allegedly reached out to his mother and asked Velez not to grant any interviews with the media.

“We should resist fear or intimidation from the state because we know that we did not violate the law,” he said in the vernacular.

In an earlier  Bulatlat report, he was one of the vocal students who bravely spoke about the alleged delay in the release of scholarship stipends, which are beneficial to college students in Cagayan de Oro. He informed Bulatlat that he received a phone call from the City Scholarship Office after the publication of the report, as the office wanted to provide an explanation about the issue.

Read: Cagayan de Oro scholars decry delay of allowances

Rom, meanwhile, stressed that no one will dare go to the countryside and take up arms if there are no abuses against innocent civilians. He said if the government wants to end the armed struggle, it should pursue peace negotiations and stop the harassment and intimidation. 

“Yes, it is very frightening. But this won’t stop me from fighting for what is right,” Rom said.

The two youth activists are keen on reporting these incidents of alleged surveillance to the Commission on Human Rights Region 10. (RVO)