“The number of violent attacks against Christian human rights defender has alarmingly increased in the three years of President Rodrigo Duterte’s government. We hold him responsible for the escalating hostile acts being committed against all human rights defenders from civil society and people’s organizations and the church community.”
The Philippine National Police’s complaint of sedition/inciting to sedition, cyber libel, libel, obstruction of justice, and harboring a criminal against lawyers, priests, Vice-President Leni Robredo, and several opposition candidates for senator in last May’s elections is likely to make it to the courts. If it does, it will be one more instance that critics of…
In 2015, on the fifth year of the P-Noy administration’s counterinsurgency program (Oplan Bayanihan), the Armed Forces of the Philippines declared the province of Negros Oriental as a “conflict-manageable and ready for further development” area. The implication was that the state security forces had succeeded in weakening the presence/influence of the New People’s Army in…
Although this law has been amended by Republic Act no. 10640 in 2014, journalists are still being pressured into signing their names as witnesses in anti-drug operations, sometimes even without them actually witnessing the operation, in exchange for the information they would need for their stories.