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.
NUPL | May 26, 2026
A city does not become safer by humiliating poor residents in mass operations over minor ordinance violations. Public order cannot be enforced by stretching local ordinances beyond their terms, bypassing constitutional limits, or treating poverty itself as suspicious.
The temporary suspension of Woggle’s permit should prompt a reckoning within the MGB through a transparent resolution of the petition and a serious examination of how a permit so plainly at odds with community opposition and ecological realities was issued at all.
For human rights defenders, humanitarian and religious workers, development NGO personnel, journalists, and community organizers, the unmistakable message is that legitimate social engagement and protected civic activity may be recast by the State as terrorism financing through broad and elastic standards untethered from real acts of terrorism. This shows how terror laws in the Philippines, by their nature and design, chill speech, deter association, and shrink civic space.
We offer our condolences to Ms. Muñoz’s family and loved ones, and our solidarity to her colleagues. May you find comfort in the respect she earned, the lives she touched, and the work she helped sustain.
People’s lawyers will continue to stand together against every form of attack, including red-tagging. Experience should have taught Parlade and others who traffic in this practice that intimidation does not deter us from our work. It only sharpens our resolve to confront the weaponization of law, as seen in the prosecution of the Talaingod 13, and to defend those whose rights are trampled in the name of security.
The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) has released a policy paper calling on Congress to enact a unified, rights-based Body-Worn Camera Transparency and Accountability Act. At present, the use of body-worn cameras in the Philippines is governed by a...
The massacre and the massive corruption are fruits from the same poisonous tree. The tree is a system where power is treated as a personal inheritance, state resources as a private treasury, and the law as a weapon against the people rather than a shield for them. The warlord who orders a massacre to secure an election and the official who diverts billions from the public coffers operate on the same core belief: that they are above the law.
The Court’s decision is a clear rebuke of the misuse of counterterrorism laws to suppress activism, journalism, and humanitarian work. It affirms that defending human rights and reporting the truth are not crimes.
NUPL stands firmly with our comrades at the NLG and all people’s lawyers who have relentlessly and steadfastly worked for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms amid violence, intimidation, and harassment. Stop the attacks!