Two men on board a motorcycle arrived outside the compound of Paghida-et sa Kauswagan Development Groun (PDG) in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental, at approximately 9:30 a.m. One of them took photographs of the vicinity using a mobile phone, while the driver remained on standby.
“The arrest and harassment of development workers not only undermine their ability to serve vulnerable communities but also erode the democratic freedoms enshrined in our Constitution,” said PDG in the letter.
Bulatlat gathered the wage orders issued by RTWPB Northern Mindanao in the past years and found out that the most recent wage hike is the lowest increase to be implemented since 2018, specifically in the non-agriculture sector.
Ronilo Villanueva is a coconut farmer who was found by elements of the 85th Infantry Battalion while out processing copra. Tanggol Quezon said Villanueva was shot on the knee and stomach before he was arrested on unknown charges. Another farmer named Genero was also arrested, according to eyewitness accounts.
“I will carry on Betchay’s legacy by continuing the fight she started,” Nanay Enda vowed, her voice shaking with both sorrow and resolve, recounting the events of the infamous Bloody Sunday Massacre.
The group said that the government’s counter-insurgency operations are falsely portrayed as successes through the detention of activists and community leaders.
“We might need semi-dam dikes to hold the river’s water capacity, while the Bato Lake needs desiltation. But our urgent need is to block the side of the river with collapsed dike,” Mayor Domingo Escoto Jr. said.
Human rights lawyer Antonio La Viña said that the missing activists were well-known in the neighborhood. “They knew it was him. The identification is positive that it was Felix.”
Apart from the abduction of Salaveria, CCTV footage obtained by Karapatan also showed another Toyota van with plate number NDR5274 on August 23 at 10:00 p.m. entering Brgy. San Lorenzo, Tabaco City where Jazmines was abducted.
The Bloody Sunday massacre refers to the series of police and military operations in Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, and Rizal provinces on March 7, 2021 that left nine activists killed and seven more arrested. Defend ST said that despite the DOJ’s investigation under Administrative Order 35, cases filed against the perpetrators “were either junked or dismissed.”
On September 10, it will be the fifth month of William’s disappearance. He was last seen in Barangay Butong, Quezon, Bukidnon. Eyewitnesses said that elements of the 48th Infantry Battalion forcibly arrested Lariosa.