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Forty-two human rights groups in the Philippines and abroad stood in solidarity with 10 Filipino human rights defenders as they condemned the ongoing harassment against them.
Two human rights defenders from Southern Tagalog said that their trumped-up charges are evidence of how the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) is used to silence critical voices.
The ongoing militarization in Tuy is only the latest in the 59th IB’s “reign of terror in Batangas,” according to Tanggol Batangan.
Human rights group Defend Southern Tagalog hopes that the latest Petition for Review could be granted, “to show that the Department of Justice actually understands the meaning of justice.”
“It seemed the shots were fired on different times…On his hand, that was way before the fatal shots,” Raquel Fortun said in a mix of English and Filipino.
“We call on the courts to attend to the more pressing resolution of the cases of at least 778 political prisoners like former Sen. De Lima and our colleague Alexander Philip Abinguna, who has been detained for more than four years on trumped-up charges, instead of harassment suits by the government and its minions against activists and ordinary citizens."
In his second State of the Nation Address, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was silent on human rights issues during his administration. Meanwhile, indigenous peoples of Gawaan, Balbalan, Kalinga stressed that their community was bombed twice in March 2023.
A decade after the enactment of the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Act of 2012, relatives of victims of enforced disappearances continue to decry lack of accountability.
Cristina Palabay denounced former National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr.’s reopening of the perjury case saying this is “but one in a series of renewed attacks against the human rights defenders of Karapatan.”
Carol Pagaduan Araullo said that she is filing the complaints “in behalf of those who do not have the means, the opportunity and support system to do so but who are experiencing red-tagging/terrorist labelling and the harassment, if not actual terror, this brings.”
“Our work in the communities continues. We will seek (for) more families to speak about their case."
Miguela Peniero and Rowena Dasig were studying the potential impacts of the proposed combined cycle gas turbine power project and liquefied natural gas terminal plant to be operated by Atimonan One Energy, Inc. (A1E) on coconut farmers and fisherfolk communities.
“With EO 33, which calls for more stringent implementation of FATF recommendations, we can anticipate its dire results: the designation as terrorists of even more political activists and the curtailment of even more pro-people and development-oriented programs on false and malicious accusations of terrorist linkages."
“While we at CPA continue to seek legal remedies to ensure our safety, security, and human rights in this shrinking democratic space, the state also weaponizes everything at its disposal to silence us."
The families of indigenous peoples’ rights advocates Dexter Capuyan and Gene Roz Jamil De Jesus, who disappeared more than two months ago, asked the Court of Appeals to order law enforcement authorities to surface their missing kin.
“The Philippine government must ensure the strict compliance by its national security forces with domestic and international laws protecting the basic rights of persons deprived of liberty and impose all necessary sanctions on those who ceaselessly and obstinately transgress these obligations."
“It took four years for Ge-ann to be acquitted of all the charges against her, involving a ridiculous trove of firearms and explosives that bear the usual telltale marks of planted evidence."
National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace consultant Frank Fernandez and wife Cleofe Lagtapon were convicted of illegal possession of firearms by Branch 266 of the Taguig City Regional Trial Court (RTC), human rights group Karapatan reported.
"It is undeniable that this latest memo from DepEd is part of a long trend of similar attacks against ACT, and such moves — with their intent to profile ACT's members — not only violate rights to privacy and security as well as teachers' basic right to organize and unionize."
Cristina Palabay, secretary-general of Karapatan, said that the increased use of the anti-terror law and other trumped-up charges against activists has become a pattern during the first year of Ferdinand Marcos Jr administration.
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