A regional court in Tagum City, Davao del Norte province suspended the arrest orders for five activists from Northern Luzon accused by police in the killing of a Lumad in Southern Mindanao in 2018.
Five activists were killed and at least three others were arrested in what appeared to be government crackdown on progressives in Southern Luzon early this morning, March 7.
A human rights lawyer who is among the co-counsel of a petition to the Supreme Court against the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 was stabbed in the head on Wednesday March 3, prompting colleagues to raise concern.
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.
