NUPL President Atty. Ephraim B. Cortez responded to the Bureau of Corrections’ denial of transfer of retired Major General Jovito Palparan, who was convicted in 2018 of the kidnapping and serious illegal detention of University of the Philippines students Sherlyn...
NUPL | Jun 19, 2026
NUPL President Atty. Ephraim B. Cortez spoke on the baseless nature of the indirect contempt petition against Rep. Sarah Elago. Read the whole statement...
NUPL Secretary General Atty. Josalee Deinla speaks on the cost that comes with people’s lawyering during her acceptance speech for the 2026 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award received on behalf of the NUPL last June 4,...
Erlinda Cadapan and Concepcion Empeño, mothers of abducted University of the Philippines students Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeño, filed a Manifestation before the Supreme Court seeking to compel the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) to disclose the present...
"This award is a salute to our battle-scarred visionary leaders, but above all, it belongs to our fallen. It honors Atty. Benjamin Ramos, Atty. Juan Macababbad, and others who paid the ultimate price for standing with poor peasants, workers, and indigenous...
NUPL Vice President Atty. Angelo Karlo Guillen and Secretary General Atty. Josa Deinla with lawyers from the Kennedy Human Rights Center and Kerry Kennedy at the Capitol in Washington D.C.
The Philippine government finds paths only to new methods of repression and enforces the peace of the grave at home. Human rights monitors, including Karapatan, document a continuing pattern of violence: extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and widespread attacks on rural communities. On April 19, state forces killed 19 people in Toboso, Negros Occidental, including civilians standing in solidarity with farmers asserting their land rights.
The petitioners, all respected advocates for indigenous peoples’ rights and self-determination, sought judicial review of their designation as terrorists by the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) in 2023. Their petition constituted the first—and, to our knowledge, remains the only—as-applied constitutional challenge to the ATC’s power to designate individuals and organizations as terrorists under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020.
On May 27, 2026, the PNP Cateel station posted on its official Facebook page the photographs of KARAPATAN-Southern Mindanao Region Deputy Secretary General Grecian Gasoy, along with known rights leaders from Kabataan Partylist and Gabriela Youth, with captions suggesting criminal liability. The posts have since been taken down, but their removal does not erase the danger they created, nor the accountability that must follow.
Frenchie and Marielle continue to maintain their innocence and assert that the charges filed against them form part of a broader pattern of harassment, red-tagging, and criminalization directed against journalists, activists, humanitarian workers, and human rights defenders in the Philippines.
