Rights groups seeking to investigate the death of a nine-year-old girl in Taysan, Batangas province have been prevented by soldiers from talking to the victim’s family. Karapatan-Southern Tagalog said the military is preventing the truth from coming out.
“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.”
The human rights group stated that “no legal documents were processed to authenticate the identities of the two remains,” and that they were only positively identified as Pinza and Candor upon exhuming.
By RONALYN V. OLEA
Eight combat battalions of the Philippine Army, the Philippine National Police and Citizens Armed Force Geographical Unit (Cafgu) are concentrated in the first and second districts of Quezon, harassing civilians, and wreaking havoc on the lives of the rural folk.
The Arroyo government and its allies have been harassing their critics — political activists, human-rights advocates, journalists, government employees, workers, teachers, environmentalists, lawyers, to name some — with court cases that range from the frivolous to the absurd. Now, these victims of political persecution have banded together to fight back.