"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.
Liezel Asuncion, widow of slain labor leader Emmanuel “Ka Manny” Asuncion, recounted the harrowing events of that day, detailing how the police raided their home and shot her husband. "They claimed my husband fought back, but I was there—I saw what really happened," she said. Asuncion highlighted the use of defective search warrants and fabricated charges that have plagued similar cases against activists.
Rosenda Lemita and Liezel Asuncion filed a case at the United Nations Human Rights Committee against the murder of their loved ones. The decision to file a case was not made lightly – it took three years of delays and disappointment from the justice system to push them to seek an international avenue.
“We’re ready to testify before the QuadComm as victims of extrajudicial killings,” Rosenda Lemita said, stressing that they want Duterte and those responsible to face investigation. For these families, the government’s “nanlaban” excuse is not just for the drug war but also for silencing activists.
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."
Human rights group Defend Southern Tagalog hopes that the latest Petition for Review could be granted, “to show that the Department of Justice actually understands the meaning of justice.”
“In due time, the NUPL will move for reconsideration of the resolution and reassert that the police respondents’ theories — nay, fake plots — of self-defense and lawful performance of one’s duty are, under the circumstances, not compelling enough to overcome a finding of probable cause. They should be indicted before a court of law and made to answer for their crimes."
The circumstances of Buiza’s arrest echoes the simultaneous police and military operations conducted last March 7, 2021, which resulted in nine deaths and six arrests across the Southern Tagalog region, dubbed ‘Bloody Sunday’. Six of the victims and three of the arrests happened in Rizal province.
Rights group DEFEND Southern Tagalog condemned the decision, asserting that the DOJ’s insistence on “presumption of regularity” is a “grave injustice.”
A Calamba court granted Nimfa Lanzanas’ demurrer to evidence over the alleged violation of illegal possession of firearms, explosives, and ammunition.
“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
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