“We fear for our lives and liberty, knowing that we are in this list being circulated after a national accompaniment mission that provided support to Lumad and peasant leaders wrongfully charged and detained by the state,” Calang told Davao Today.
The flyers tagged local church workers, lawyers, rights advocates and a journalist as “terrorist members of the New People’s Army and Communist Party of the Philippines.”
Families of Desaparecidos have made an appeal to the United Nation (UN), particularly to the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UN-WGEID) to keep open the 625 cases and look into more cases which have not been reported to the body.
The recent threats and attacks that targeted a missionary worker, a volunteer teacher, and two human rights defenders has raised a serious concern over the safety of individuals working in progressive organizations that are critical to the government.
A militant human rights group on Monday lambasted the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) for allegedly detaining two women who were human rights workers in Cagayan de Oro City, in what they described as a sweeping crackdown against groups critical to the Duterte administration.
Human rights advocates are wary of a countrywide martial law if the military’s proposed amendments to the anti-terror law will be legislated.
The massive human rights violations committed against the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) or lumads and peasants are designed to silence the opposition to the continuing operations of large-scale mining and plantations in Northern Mindanao and the rest of Caraga Region.
The peace group Sowing the Seeds of Peace (SSP) said the death of National Democratic Front peace consultant was a big blow to the peace process and apparently sends a chilling effects to peace advocates.
Karapatan deplores pattern of killings, arrests of civilians recently ‘abducted’ by military or police in Mindanao.
Human rights group Barug Katungod Mindanao condemned the arrest of a lumad and peasant leaders Datu Jomorito Goaynon and Ireneo Udarbe in Cagayan de Oro on “false criminal charges and planted evidence.”
