KARAPATAN called for an end to the military and police harassment of a team conducting a study on the effects of El Niño and the construction of an EDCA site on the ancestral lands of an indigenous group in Palawan.
Journalist Marky Casaquite of Southern Tagalog Exposure and writer-photographer and League of Filipino Students-Southern Tagalog member Brent Sumague were in Barangay Catagupan, Balabac town on October 9, 2026 consulting with members of the Molbog indigenous group when they were harassed and threatened by some 15 combined elements of the AFP Western Command, Philippine Navy and PNP-Balabac. They were brought to the barangay hall of Catagupan where a certain Xylon Aliño told them that if he saw them again in the area, he would bury them alive.
The military and police demanded identification from the team, attempted to confiscate their materials on El Niño, and threatened to destroy their devices and equipment if they refused. They were not allowed to spend the night in the community and were forcibly brought to a boarding house in the town center, where Western Command elements in civilian clothes monitored them. They left town the following day and relocated to a safer location amid continuing threats to their safety.
Meanwhile, the incident has brought even more fear to the local Molbog community which has been suffering intimidation and the destruction of the environment in their ancestral lands due to the construction of the EDCA site. Police and military elements have forbidden them from massing up without “coordinating” with the barangay and the police, a clear violation of their right to peaceably assemble to air their grievances.
The EDCA site in Balabac island is one of two in Palawan, the other being at the Antonio Bautista Air Base in Puerto Princesa. The US has just completed upgrades at the Balabac EDCA site, including the construction of a concrete pier and a military grade runway to replace the Balabac airstrip.
“It is unconscionable for the Marcos Jr. regime to run roughshod on the Molbog indigenous people’s rights to their ancestral domain just to give way to the construction of a US military outpost near the West Philippine Sea,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay. “And it is equally unconscionable for the police and military to harass and threaten people who want to get the facts on the ground about the impact on the masses of both natural disasters like El Niño and man-made disasters like militarization to protect US interests.”
“Marky Casaquite, Brent Sumague and other journalists, researchers and documenters have every right to work safely to ferret out the truth and bring it to the public,” concluded Palabay.
