Rights group KARAPATAN called anew for the release of three detained activists in Tacloban City after the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression cited their cases as “emblematic of a wider pattern in cases involving red-tagging.”
“We demand that the Marcos Jr. government immediately take action to release KARAPATAN human rights worker Alexander Philip Abinguna, community journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio, and Rural Missionaries of the Philippines staff Marielle Domequil,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay. “Their prolonged detention, worsened by the slow pace of court processes, and their continued vilification through red-tagging should cease the soonest,” she added. “The Philippine government has so far refused to address our just demands for their unconditional release.”
KARAPATAN expressed support for UNSR Irene Khan whose report on the Philippines called for the abolition of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTF-ELCAC, citing the vicious pattern of activists, critics and even ordinary persons bring red-tagged by the agency as a prelude to other more serious rights violations like extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, unjust arrest and detention.
According to Khan, “The Tacloban cases are emblematic of a wider pattern in cases involving red-tagging, where the pace of judicial procedures is remarkably slow, extending the pretrial detention period to such an extent that it is sometimes equivalent to a conviction. Prolonged pretrial detention, the refusal to grant bail when there is no risk of flight and the extremely slow disposal of cases, especially when trumped-up charges are later dismissed by the judiciary, make a travesty of justice, equating the innocent with the guilty. The lack of any sense of urgency in resolving such cases is also evident in the failure of the Government to respond to the communication sent by the Special Rapporteur on 27 September 2024.”
In her report, the UNSR particularly recommended to the Philippine government the “prompt release of Cumpio, Abinguna and Domequil,” as well as the dismissal of the trumped-up charges against them. During Khan’s visit to the Philippines last year, she was able to see Cumpio, Abinguna and Domequil in detention. She later questioned why the three were still in jail, and supported calls for their release.
The Tacloban activists, who have been languishing in jail since their arrest in 2020, are still undergoing trial for trumped-up cases of illegal possession of firearms and explosives based on evidence planted at the scene by police operatives. Cumpio and Domequil have also been slapped with terrorism financing cases, while Abinguna and Cumpio are facing a new case of double murder based on the perjured testimonies of a “rebel returnee” that link them to an ambush by the New People’s Army in October 2019.
“These cases are all designed to prolong their unjust detention, attesting to the fact that attacks on freedoms and the people’s human rights remain prevalent in the country,” concluded Palabay. “The NTF-ELCAC, as the foremost government agency spearheading such malicious campaigns, must be abolished.”
