Solidarity with the prisoners!
Condemn the fascist evidence planters and oppressors!
By Kat Ulrike
At first, this writer vehemently condemns the most recent string of crackdowns against activists and progressive organizations in last week’s Bacolod City and Manila City raids and mass arrest.
Using a questionable search warrant as its pretext for arrest, the Philippine National Police (PNP) conducted raids at the offices of groups National Federation of Sugar Workers, trade union center Kilusang Mayo Uno, women's group Gabriela, and Bayan Muna partylist, followed by the massive arrest of around 60 Bacolod City-based activists.
Along with the raid in Negros, the Police, along with the Military, hath conducted a joint operation that raided BAYAN-Manila, arresting three activists at around 1 a.m. from its office at Tondo, Manila.
These attacks are templated, along with the fascists planting evidence of firearms and explosives at their offices, justifying with the same search warrant provided by the same Regional Trial Court Judge from Quezon City.
With this kind of act, expect Duterte and his apologists justifying this venture on the basis of thwarting rebellion and illegal possession of firearms. It is unsurprising, for as in the recent months of arresting activists and trade unionists, this travesty of oppression shows the government’s attempts to silence dissent, and to scare those who fight and defend civil liberties and human rights in the country.
Moreover, in seeing how the Duterte regime rules with open terror as it unjustly intensifies its crackdown, first by trampling on academic freedom and progressive instruction by profiling teachers and spying on student leaders and organisations; second, by advocating for the militarization of both state and private colleges and universities under the guise of mandatory ROTC, military seminars, and other covert infiltration tactics; and third, as it now blurs the boundary between the urban and the rural, by conducting outright raids in the legitimate offices of mass organizations here and there, arresting activists and be justified by planting guns and grenades, with an outright declaring of mass organisations, including civic society groups like Oxfam, and even churches as "terrorist groups" or "destabilisers", thereby putting the country altogether in an unofficial state of martial law.
Thus, because of this condemnable act, each and every concerned should sternly remind the government that activism, of seeking truth from facts, and its assertion for genuine social change is never a crime, and that their repression will build more resistance from the people. Along with solidarity with the imprisoned activists, as well as their families, friends, and loved ones.
And from this solidarity, and of continuous seeking truth from facts amidst threats, shows that the people will continue to resist this political crackdown, assert civil liberties, and to continue the fight for people's democracy against Duterte’s orderism through de facto Martial Law.