Pamalakaya calls for the immediate and unconditional release of activists in Negros
We strongly condemn the illegal raid of progressive organizations’ offices and mass arrest of activists by combined forces of police and military in Bacolod City late afternoon today. This is clearly a crackdown or political persecution of the legal mass movement in the region that criticizes the Duterte administration’s anti-people and anti-poor policies and programs.
The illegal police and military operation was a cogent evidence of President Rodrigo Duterte’s tyranny and de facto martial rule in Negros Island, aside from the mounting cases of extra-judicial killings against peasants and activists throughout the country.
This is a dangerous precedent to critics and other sectors, as this is not exclusive to activists who are labelled national democrats and usually red-tagged as members of the New People’s Army (NPA), but a dress rehearsal to the all-out setting up of an absolutist rule of Duterte where dissent is nipped in the bud via filing of trumped up charges, harassments and outright murder.
We urge the freedom-loving people of Negros to rise up for the defense of human rights and democracy, and Filipinos across the country to join #DefendNegros alliance, and hold the Duterte regime accountable for this blatant violation of the rule of law and due process. ###
