“The militarist and punitive framework of policing the pandemic in the form of policies resulting in mass arrests and detention of alleged violators runs counter to the purpose of quarantine protocols which is to protect and uphold people’s health.”
The police and military also forced the victims to sign a document linking them to the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), CEGP said.
“This latest decision of the court which overturned the presumption that the search warrant issued by Judge Burgos-Villavert satisfied the constitutional requirement of definiteness, has increasingly disproved the competence and integrity of the said judge as well as other similar judges who have arbitrarily issued search warrants against known activist and members of caused-oriented organizations.”
“It was obvious that the activists were held up by the police to prevent them from joining the SONA ng Bayan.”
“Exactly 24 hours since Rodrigo Duterte affixed his signature on the draconian Terror Law, the first arrests were made on activists who held a peaceful protest against the dangerous law.”
Hundreds of students and activists held a protest inside UP-Cebu grounds to call for the junking of Anti-Terror Bill but policemen forcibly entered the campus and arrested seven protesters.
They had no income for two months and received no aid from government. When they held a protest demanding government to allow them to earn a living, they were arrested and detained.
Among those arrested is a nursing mother who was tending to her two-month-old baby in a hospital when arrested in Oriental Mindoro.
Five peasant activists were arrested, a priest and a bishop of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente were put under surveillance.
By RONALYN V. OLEA
Those arrested were charged with cases in relation to New People’s Army ambuscades, which occurred in areas where they have never even set foot on. Is this part of another crackdown on political activists, this time by the Aquino administration?