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"The complainants bring the instant action in order to finally address a continuing wrong, to vindicate their basic rights, and to remind public officials that illegal, improper, unjust and oppressive acts and utterances, especially those vicious and virulent, are not without consequence. We also just want to do our work as lawyers,” the complaint read.
This does not change the fact that being added to Duterte’s narco list has become like a death sentence: seven of the 24 murdered mayors and vice-mayors had been implicated in the list before they were killed by unknown assailants.
The complaint said the red-tagging of Cristina Palabay, Karapatan and its members and officers by the respondents violates the principle of distinction under international and domestic humanitarian law.
Republic Act 11148 or First 1,000 Days law seeks to provide children with necessary nutrition and health program from their conception as an infant up to their second birthday.
For the Makabayan bloc and other progressive organizations, the recently concluded Senate hearing on red-tagging will be used by state security forces as a justification to declare them as terrorists under the Anti-Terror Law.
Amanda is the daughter of extrajudicially killed Randall “Ka Randy’ Echanis. She was arrested early morning of December 2, Tuesday, in Baggao, Cagayan.
“The subtext of our legal submissions is that hers is a case of patent abuse of authority by the state — of a negotiated procurement of defective search warrants; of a crackdown not on crime, but on legitimate dissent; of an oft recycled charge of illegal possession of firearms and explosives lodged against activists filed not on the basis of fact and evidence, but on the convenience of the unavailability of posting bail as a matter of right.”
"...[t]here is a compelling necessity and urgency to prevent, running up to almost two (2) months before the oral arguments, any further implementation of the provisions of the assailed law as they impact on the lives, liberties and security of the petitioners and the public at large.”
“You think you can kill a movement by persecuting them? You do not know history. If you see the history of the Catholic church, it only grew when there were martyrs whose blood actually watered the seed that was sown by Jesus Christ. So if you think that you will break the movement, you will break dissent by persecuting, you are very much mistaken.”
Human rights lawyers representing Reina Mae Nasino said the Manila judge exhibited manifest bias and partiality against the political prisoner and her co-accused.
This is not the first time that a national minority was charged with terrorism.
Hanimay Suazo is a high-profile human rights defender in Davao City. In 2019, she was disappeared after being red-tagged by an Army general.
"There is something wrong because her 23-year old mother was detained not because she did something wrong, but because she was wrongfully accused." -- Bishop Broderick Pabillo
Today marks the 40th day since the death of Baby River, daughter of a political prisoner Reina Mae Nasino. The term cruel is an understatement to describe how the mother and child were separated and how it revealed serious gaps if not flaws in the country’s justice system.
Armando Buisan was a copra farmer and a resident of sitio Luyahan, barangay Magsaysay, General Luna, Quezon. He fought for the rights of coconut farmers in the community for almost three decades and was a well-known leader.
Neri Colmenares, one of the country’s most prominent public interest lawyers, is this year’s awardee for outstanding contribution to human rights by the foremost organization for international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies.
“What lies ahead for the Filipino people with Sinas’s appointment is a bloody party of human rights violations where Duterte’s most rabid and murderous lapdogs are given freer rein to merrily kill, kill, and kill with wanton impunity.”
"Imelda Marcos was allowed to post bail two years ago, citing health reasons, even though she was able to attend and host parties since that time. Meanwhile, we have sickly and elderly political prisoners who were wrongly accused or convicted of crimes they have not committed, but are still unjustly suffering behind prison bars."
As the nation reels from the destruction of the typhoon and continued socio-economic impacts of the pandemic, Karapatan said that the hearing is not only ill-timed but “a foreboding of the things to come when the Anti-Terrorism Act is fully implemented.”
The group continues to demand justice for all victims of enforced disappearance and to hold into account the perpetrators. There are more than 1,000 who disappeared from Marcos dictatorship until the present administration, according to Desaparecidos.
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