“These are not isolated incidents,” said Charm Maranan, Defend ST spokesperson. “These are coordinated attacks by the Philippine National Police, by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict to disenfranchise the people from their legitimate demands.”
To carry that weight is to carry on the struggles our comrades left behind. It is to continue the shared struggle that binds us despite our grief and loss, because what we carry is more than our individual wants but the hopes of the Filipino masses – the same hopes that so many of us have paid the ultimate price in order to make it a reality.
Both Lino Baez and Willy Capareño are no strangers to red-tagging and state harassment. The warrant issued against Baez came from the March 7 raid of his home in Santo Tomas, Batangas, where police and military supposedly “found” firearms and explosives. The raid was part of “Bloody Sunday”, which resulted in the deaths of nine activists and the arrests of seven others.
To date, there are 31 unionists who remain in detention for trumped-up charges and 56 trade unionists extrajudicially killed in the country.
Killings of environmental defenders under the Duterte administration account for 66 percent of the 282 recorded killings since 2001.
“For accountability and justice to hold sway, we press that a review be made of all cases that emanated from the sala of those judges who turned their courts into a search warrant factory that led to the arrest and outright killing of activists.”
“Targets are mostly chest – where vital internal organs are located including the heart and the lungs and can be deadly.”
Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay lamented that the justice department’s task force is not doing enough to resolve the extrajudicial killings in Calabarzon.
Amid the national outrage and international concern raised over the March 7 “Bloody Sunday” killing of nine activists in the Southern Tagalog region, urgent calls are being addressed to the Supreme Court to do what it can, while it can, to protect the people’s constitutional rights.
“How can [the judiciary] distance themselves [from the police action] if they themselves signed the documents used to make the operations seem legitimate?” – Defend Southern Tagalog
By DEE AYROSO