ADVERTISEMENT
In protest rally Friday in front of Nica building, human-rights groups denounce the continuing use of torture. They likewise commemorate the third year of the disappearance of UP students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño. Edita Burgos says the promotion of three officials linked to the abduction of her son Jonas will encourage more atrocities.
University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño were abducted three years ago by suspected military agents. Check out Bulatlat's full coverage.
A recent survey finds that the Philippines remains on top of the list of most dangerous countries for workers for several years now. Labor groups say the ILO’s decision to conduct a fact-finding mission here highlights the worsening abuses against labor-rights activists.
Torture Victim Turns Over a New Leaf
Pressured by the military, officials of a high school in Quezon City rejected the enrollment of a student activist. She could only enroll at the school, they told her, if she signed a waiver that would prohibit her from participating in protest actions and rallies. Aghast and angry, the student decided to fight back.
In forum, CHR officials and journalists from the NUJP bewail the use by the military of OBs. CHR chairperson Leila de Lima says the AFP claimed to have stopped using OBs but replaced these with “watch lists” – and military officials could not explain to her the difference.
Unless the Arroyo regime released all the individuals it has thrown to jail for politically motivated and fabricated charges, the abolition last month of the agency behind these cases will amount to nothing but a publicity stunt, according to lawyers and human-rights advocates.
Fermin Lorico was a peasant organizer and a mass leader. He had been a marked man. On Wednesday, minutes after attending the anti-charter change rally in Dumaguete City, a gunman shot him several times – the latest in a series of extrajudicial killings of progressive leaders in Negros Oriental.
Despite public statements from Arroyo denouncing extrajudicial killings, there is a gap between her rhetoric and what it has done to address the killings, said the group from the Netherlands and Belgium called Lawyers for Lawyers. Whatever initiatives she has implemented have failed to produce actual results, it said.
The landlord-dominated Congress, led by the relatives of President Arroyo, voted Wednesday night to add five more years to the implementation of a 20-year-old agrarian-reform program that has failed to uplift the lives of peasants and farmers in the Philippines. And critics say the new proposed law is even worse than the original.
Melissa Roxas Case: Military Is Accountable
A community of readers and supporters that help us sustain our operations through microdonations for as low as $1.
Save as PDF