Lawyers and lumad advocates slammed the Philippine National Police for keeping a Bakwit School teacher away from family and lawyers in the past days.
A group of Manobo evacuees seeking refuge inside the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Haran compound decried on the repeated accusations of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) that ‘’bakwit schools’ train child warriors and earn profit from taking shelter in the cities to expose their plight in the communities they temporarily left behind.
A Lumad student in a Bakwit School in UP Diliman had this response to the recent pronouncement of the Philippine National Police Region 7 that their schools are “training grounds for child warriors.”
Police and social workers in Cebu on Monday took custody of 21 Lumad students and arrested tribal elders and school teachers from their “Bakwit School” in the University of San Carlos Talamban campus, claiming this was a “rescue” from a rebel training school.
The University of the Philippines Mindanao’s Student Council urged its administration to defend its constituents following recent red-tagging incidents against members of the university’s community.
A parish priest killed last Sunday and a lawyer who was also gunned down two weeks ago in the same city of Malaybalay both faced similar circumstances of court charges.
An interfaith advocacy group denounced the killing of Dr. Mary Rose Sancelan in Guihulngan, Negros Occidental as a “pitfall” of the government’s current anti-communist witch-hunt.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor said on Monday there is “reasonable basis” that crimes against humanity were committed under the Duterte administration’s war on drugs campaign and may decide to investigate this by first half of 2021.
Alvin Luque, a known Davao activist who joined the National Democratic Front in Mindanao to become its spokesperson, was killed by a joint special action team when he resisted arrest in Tandag, Surigao del Sur at the early hours of December 10, Human Rights Day.
Former presidents of the Davao City chapter of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) issued a statement criticizing the Duterte administration’s counter-insurgency has been reduced to red-tagging of activists, critics and fellow lawyers.
