The congressional letter addressed to Philippine Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez echoes the very alarms consistently raised by human rights defenders, lawyers, and civil society organizations on the ground. For months, the 79th Infantry Battalion (IB) of the Philippine Army has aggressively peddled the manufactured narrative that all 19 victims of the armed encounter were combatants of the New People’s Army (NPA). However, an independent fact-finding mission has resolutely laid bare the truth: up to nine of the victims were unarmed civilians, including US citizens Kai Sorem and Lyle Prijoles, journalist RJ Nichole Ledesma, land rights defenders Maureen Santuyo and Errol Wendel, and university student Alyssa Alano. 

We share the grave concerns of the US lawmakers regarding the systemic barriers effectively crippling domestic accountability mechanisms. The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is being obstructed by the military’s deliberate refusal to cooperate. By denying independent investigators access to official records and monopolizing control over the crime scene in the critical hours following the massacre, the military and the Philippine National Police (PNP) have shamelessly attempted to sanitize the narrative and cover their tracks.

The Toboso Massacre does not exist in a vacuum. As the US legislators rightly pointed out, it occurred within the broader context of the state’s counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism campaigns. Through the deadly practice of red-tagging, state forces routinely obliterate the principle of distinction between armed combatants and unarmed civilians. This is deliberately compounded by the weaponization of terror laws, which conflate armed conflict with terrorism to cast a dragnet over the armed movement and the legal democratic movement falsely associated with it. By deploying these tactics, the state suffocates civic space and places a target on the backs of rights defenders, journalists, community organizers, and humanitarian workers. 

International solidarity is crucial in shattering the culture of impunity in the Philippines. We stand firmly with all eleven signatories of the letter: Senators Jeffrey A. Merkley, Adam B. Schiff, and Chris Van Hollen, alongside Representatives Pramila Jayapal, Maxine Dexter, Jesús G. “Chuy” García, James P. McGovern, Kweisi Mfume, Johnny Olszewski, Jr., Delia C. Ramirez, and Rashida Tlaib. We reiterate their call for a truly independent, impartial, and credible investigation into the Toboso killings. We further demand the full cooperation of the Philippine Army in turning over critical evidence and allow the active participation of independent civil society actors to ensure the facts are objectively brought to light. 

The perpetrators of this massacre, as well as the commanding officers who orchestrated and enabled it, must be held fully accountable and brought to the bars of justice. ###

Press Statement

Reference: 

Atty. Josalee S. Deinla

NUPL Secretary General

+639174316396

(Photo credit: Bulatlat)

The post NUPL Welcomes US Lawmakers’ Call for Independent Probe into the ‘Toboso 19’ Massacre, Urges End to State Impunity appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

Within a span of weeks, Atty. Santos has been subjected to a malicious cyber libel complaint filed by the North Luzon Mineral Resources Corporation, alongside a retaliatory persona non grata declaration by the Bugkalot Confederation of Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, and Aurora. These coordinated acts target a people’s lawyer for exercising his fundamental freedom of speech outside the courtroom—raising legitimate, urgent questions regarding corporate plunder, environmental destruction, and the illegal dispossession of indigenous lands. We firmly maintain that lawyers do not shed their constitutional rights when they take up the public interest. Rather, their advocacy is indispensable to shaping public discourse and guaranteeing genuine access to justice.

This trumped-up criminal complaint is a textbook Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP): the abuse of legal mechanisms not to vindicate a genuine legal right, but to exhaust, intimidate, and silence human rights defenders, activists, and dissenters. It perverts the legal system and co-opts community institutions into instruments of political reprisal. Persona non grata resolutions, meanwhile, are hostile declarations that are never mere expressions of disagreement, but rather dangerous instruments of state and corporate sanction designed to stigmatize, isolate, and endanger advocates on the ground. 

Atty. Santos merely dared to demand transparency regarding a mining company’s legal compliance and the irreversible human and environmental toll of its operations in Kasibu. For fulfilling this professional and ethical duty, he is made to face malicious prosecution and public exclusion. Atty. Balgos faces an identical campaign of vilification and intimidation precisely because he, too, refused to betray the people’s cause by remaining silent.

NUPL demands an immediate end to all forms of harassment, vilification, and retaliatory legal action against Attys. Santos and Balgos. We call upon all state agencies, local authorities, and community bodies to respect and uphold the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers by ensuring that people’s lawyers are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment, or improper interference, and that they shall not suffer, or be threatened with, prosecution or extra-legal sanctions for standing alongside marginalized communities.

No lawyer should ever be persecuted for standing with the people. ###

Press Statement

20 July 2026

Reference:

Atty. Josalee S. Deinla

NUPL Secretary General

+639174316396

Photo credit: Atty. Ellice Balgos

The post Stop the Persecution of Nueva Vizcaya’s People’s Lawyers appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

This latest smear was deployed to discredit Atty. Amando Virgil Ligutan, a private prosecutor in the ongoing impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, by falsely linking him to our ranks. For the NUPL, this deadly script is a tired, yet lethal, reality. Long before Atty. Ligutan’s name was dragged into these fabricated narratives, the NUPL has borne the brunt of a ruthless counter-insurgency framework that criminalizes and vilifies the assertion of rights and freedoms. In 2018, our founding member and NUPL-Negros Secretary General, Atty. Benjamin Ramos, was included in a hit-list poster in Moises Padilla, branded as an NPA recruiter as he was representing farmers and the rural poor. By November of that year, he was assassinated in Kabankalan City shortly after assisting families of farmers who were massacred in Sagay.

We have relentlessly pushed back against red-tagging, even when our legal attempts to seek accountability have fallen short. In 2023, the Office of the Ombudsman found both spokespersons of the NTF-ELCAC administratively liable for red-tagging our organization. But the penalty was a mere reprimand. Nothing else followed: there was no retraction, no accountability, and no change in behavior. 

It is within this repressive context that the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers—the Havana Principles—must be understood. The Havana Principles obligate governments to ensure lawyers can practice without intimidation and mandate the protection of lawyers under threat. Most crucially, Principle 18 explicitly forbids identifying lawyers with their clients or their clients’ causes.

A person charged under the government’s draconian counter-terrorism framework does not forfeit the presumption of innocence—a fundamental right that is never conditional on the political sympathies of the regime. When the NUPL defends clients accused of being insurgents, we are not “freeing communist terrorists,” as falsely claimed. We are fulfilling the exact mandate of the Havana Principles, which emphasize that the adequate protection of human rights requires all persons to have effective access to an independent legal profession. To brand us “patakas” for discharging this constitutional duty is an affront not just to the NUPL, but to the basic tenets of due process.

The timing of this incident is entirely deliberate. Red-tagging a counsel in one of the most consequential proceedings for accountability in recent history—the impeachment of a sitting Vice President—is a desperate maneuver. It is an ad hominem tactic designed to weaken the prosecution and the merits of its case. It is a stark reminder that red-tagging is utilized not only to silence dissenters, but also to protect the powerful from accountability. 

Red-tagging must be exposed and rejected every time it is deployed, whether against a private prosecutor demanding accountability from the highest offices, or a people’s lawyer defending a farmer in the countryside. The NUPL has endured this lethal rhetoric for years, but it has never stopped us from standing by our clients. We will continue to defend the poor and the persecuted, and assert the independence of the legal profession against those who seek to dismantle it. ###

Press Statement

July 12, 2026

Reference:

Atty. Josalee S. Deinla

NUPL Secretary General

+639174316396

(Photo credit: Bulatlat.com)

The post On the Weaponization of Red-Tagging and the Systematic Assault on the Legal Profession appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

As the Senate convenes as an impeachment court to try Vice President Sara Duterte, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) issues a stern reminder to the senator-judges regarding a fundamental constitutional premise: the power you are about to exercise is not yours. It belongs to the people.

Article XI of the 1987 Constitution is clear that public office is a public trust. Impeachment is the exact mechanism the sovereign Filipino people embedded into our fundamental law to oust the highest officials who betray that trust. It is not a bargaining chip for rival factions of the ruling elite. It is not a weapon for dynastic warfare, nor is it a theater for political rehabilitation. When senators treat this constitutional process as a political transaction, they do not just fail their mandate; they usurp a power that was never theirs to trade in the first place.

We have seen how this chamber can easily bend to partisan interests and political self-preservation before it answers to the public. This is exactly why the people cannot simply entrust this trial to the senators alone. The law does not enforce itself, least of all against those in power. Every meaningful mechanism of accountability in our history only worked because an organized, vigilant public demanded it. The masses marching to the Senate today are not mere spectators to this trial. They are its rightful principals.

The NUPL therefore demands an expeditious trial that is entirely free from obstruction, dilatory tactics, and manufactured technicalities. We expect the full and unhindered presentation of evidence before the impeachment court and, by extension, the Filipino public. Above all, these proceedings must remain transparent, impartial, and strictly insulated from backroom deals or political accommodations.

We also reject the fiction that accountability begins and ends with Sara Duterte. The brazen plunder of public funds is not an isolated aberration by a single official. It is the standard operation of a state captured by competing political clans—Dutertes and Marcoses alike—and the elite interests backing them. The confidential funds at the center of this trial sit within the exact same architecture of impunity that shields extrajudicial killings from prosecution and diverts public wealth away from public need. Lahat ng sangkot, dapat managot.

This impeachment trial is just one battleground in the much longer struggle to make power truly answerable to the people it claims to serve. As people’s lawyers, the NUPL will watch these proceedings relentlessly and will stand with the Filipino people, fully aware that the fight for justice does not end when the Senate adjourns, but continues in the courts, in the streets, and in our communities. ###

Press Statement
6 July 2026

Reference:
Atty. Josalee S. Deinla
NUPL Secretary General
+639174316396

The post THE IMPEACHMENT COURT BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE: TRY SARA DUTERTE FULLY, TRANSPARENTLY, AND WITHOUT DELAY  appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

Railroaded through the legislature during a pandemic lockdown and over the broadest constitutional opposition in our history, Republic Act No. 11479, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (ATA), was always an instrument of state repression. When the law faced thirty-seven constitutional petitions before the Supreme Court, including our own, we warned that this legislation was designed to target activists, human rights defenders, journalists, humanitarian workers, and marginalized communities. Six years of draconian enforcement have vindicated our warnings, case by fabricated case, freeze order by arbitrary freeze order. 

The State’s own judicial record exposes the lie. Prosecutions for terrorism and terrorism financing under the ATA and its companion statute, the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act, routinely collapse under judicial scrutiny. They are dismissed on constitutional grounds, thrown out for sheer lack of evidence, or end in acquittals because there was never a legitimate case to begin with—only political persecution masquerading as national security. Against this massive record of prosecutorial failure stands the conviction of journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio and humanitarian worker Marielle Domequil. This verdict runs contrary to the evidentiary standards upheld in comparable cases, and it is a conviction we will relentlessly contest until it is overturned.

But acquittal under this regime is not vindication, because the twin terror laws were engineered to punish without the need for a trial. The ATA has carved out a permanent, undeclared state of emergency within our legal system. It erodes the fundamental right to due process, granting the executive the power to detain suspects without judicial warrants for a prolonged period, and empowering the Anti-Terrorism Council to designate individuals and organizations as terrorists without prior notice or hearing. Once designated, the Anti-Money Laundering Council enforces crippling asset freezes that do not lift even when the underlying criminal charges die. Activists and development workers have been designated with no established links to terrorism, their personal accounts paralyzed, and their humanitarian programs strangled by administrative fiat. Under this framework, the process is the punishment itself. 

None of this is a mere error in implementation or “unintended consequences.” What the State administers under the guise of “counter-terrorism” is, in brutal practice, a counterinsurgency campaign. The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) directs this machinery, while the terror laws supply its legal weapons. Red-tagging remains the State’s primary method of vilification, persisting with impunity even after the Supreme Court explicitly recognized in Deduro v. Vinoya that the practice threatens life, liberty, and security. Six years of documentation establish its lethal function: red-tagging precedes the violence, or follows it to justify what was done. On 19 April of this year, nineteen people were massacred in Barangay Salamanca, Toboso, Negros Occidental—among them minors and two American citizens. The military’s sweeping insistence that all the dead were armed combatants and “terrorists” is an attempt to convert a slaughter into an accomplishment, reducing human beings to legitimate targets. This is the ultimate, deadly function of the counter-terrorism vocabulary.

And the State’s architecture of repression is expanding. Pending before Congress are the Terror Grooming Prevention Act and the cluster of Counter Foreign Interference bills—the next chapter in the same repressive playbook. The anti-grooming bills seek to criminalize emotional and ideological bonds, weaponizing the supposed protection of youth and the vulnerable as a pretext to persecute activists and dismantle communities. They seek to set up a National Terror Grooming Prevention Program that deputizes teachers, social workers, health workers, and barangay officials to identify “early signs of radicalization,” feeding names and organizational affiliations into a centralized database with no safeguards or process for removal. They compel internet service providers to block content within twenty-four hours of an executive notice, bypassing judicial review entirely. Meanwhile, the Counter Foreign Interference bills complete the enclosure by importing elastic categories of “coercive or threatening conduct” in collaboration with a “foreign principal”—language broad enough to criminalize the international solidarity and advocacy on which Philippine civil society has always depended. Every arm of the State, from the school to the barangay, is being conscripted into a single counterinsurgency effort. 

This domestic tyranny is licensed at the multilateral level, where the same states that built the global counter-terrorism regime have refused to submit it to independent oversight. The Ninth Review of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, adopted two days ago without consensus for the first time in twenty years, rolled forward the existing text and defeated every proposal to build oversight into it — including the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights’ own recommendation for an independent human rights oversight office, and his call for equal recognition of the victims of state violations committed while countering terrorism. The refusal to define “terrorism” at the UN level is the exact condition that allows domestic regimes to sweep lawful dissent into an ever-expanding security framework. 

On this sixth anniversary, our calls remain uncompromising because the facts remain unchanged. We demand the immediate repeal of the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act. We call for the complete dismantling of the NTF-ELCAC and an end to the lethal practice of red-tagging in all its forms. The State must immediately lift the wrongful designations and arbitrary freeze orders that outlive the fabricated charges they were built on, free Frenchie Mae Cumpio and Marielle Domequil, and provide meaningful redress for every individual and organization this law has wrongfully targeted.

State terror masquerading as law cannot be normalized. We will not relent until this system of repression is completely dismantled and the democratic rights of the people are fully restored. ###

Press Statement

3 July 2026

Reference: 

Atty. Josalee S. Deinla

NUPL Secretary General

+639174316396

 Photo: Iya Espiritu/Kodao

The post Six Years of State Terror: Repeal the Terror Laws appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

The question originally posed remains: Where was Palparan when the notices from the Supreme Court were refused by NBP personnel on his behalf in February and March 2026 for the reasons that Palparan “moved out: transferred to BuCor-Baguio” and “moved out to PMA Baguio” respectively?

The answer is clear: he was in Baguio City during that time. This is reflected in the above-mentioned handwritten notes in the returned mails, and confirmed by the tracking information of the Philpost. This was further supported by the PMA’s statement of non-denial and BuCor’s general statement that Palparan is still in their custody, without providing proof that he is still detained at the NBP.

Pushed to the wall by pressure from families of the victims and human rights groups, BuCor scrambled to bring Palparan back to the NBP. They did so just in time for the private complainants to see him in person inside the NBP. Contrary to the public statement of the NBP that the request of private complainants was only made on the same day of their visit, the request for verification was, in truth, sent to the BuCor as early as June 18, 2026.

To complete the performance, Palparan was shown to the private complainants in an orange shirt required for inmates at the maximum security compound, instead of the brown shirt worn by inmates at the minimum security compound which Palparan was seen wearing in the photo BuCor initially released in its vain effort to show that he was still at the NBP. Notably, NBP Superintendent Gary Garcia already publicly admitted that Palparan was previously held at the Minimum Security Compound purportedly due to unsubstantianted “security concerns.”

Despite this well-rehearsed, well-choreographed performance, the fact remains that the NBP returned the letters addressed to Palparan because he was not at the NBP when they were delivered. In its knee-jerk reaction to the issue, the BuCor unintentionally exposed to the public that Palparan is enjoying special privileges not accorded to other inmates. Aside from being allowed to stay inside the Minimum Security Compound, Palparan is also provided with regular medical care by the V. Luna Medical Center, a privilege that ordinary inmates can only dream of, while they have to wait for weeks, and even months, before requests for medical check-ups and laboratory tests are approved.

It is not enough that the BuCor presented Palparan to the private complainants on June 25, 2026. BuCor should explain why Palparan was previously allowed to be brought to PMA Baguio and why he is being accorded special privileges not given to other inmates.### 

Reference:

Atty. Julian Oliva, Jr.

NUPL Counsel

09175465799

The post Showing Jovito Palparan to Families of Karen Empeño and Sherlyn Cadapan Not Enough to Disprove Special Privileges Accorded by Bureau of Corrections to Convicted Human Rights Violator appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

These proposals run contrary to international child rights standards, scientific evidence on child development, and the principles underlying our juvenile justice system. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, through General Comment No. 24, have called on States not to lower the MACR below 14 years of age and to move toward higher age thresholds that reflect children’s evolving capacities, developmental needs, and cognitive maturity.

Republic Act No. 9344, as amended, recognizes that children in conflict with the law should be dealt with through a justice system that prioritizes intervention, diversion, and restorative justice. Weakening these protections would constitute a significant step backward in the advancement of children’s rights.

The tragic incidents of school violence in Tacloban and Cavite should not be used to justify lowering the MACR. Rather than resorting to punitive measures, policymakers must address the underlying causes of juvenile offending, including poverty, disempowering education system, abuse, neglect, social exclusion, and unmet developmental and mental health needs. These incidents likewise highlight the responsibility of parents, schools, communities, and government to ensure the safety and well-being of children.

At a time when violence and impunity continue to persist in society, including against human rights defenders, church workers, women, youth, and children, lowering the age of criminal responsibility will not make our communities safer. What is needed are stronger child protection mechanisms, accessible social services, quality education, and effective community-based interventions.

NUPL reiterates that the appropriate response to juvenile offenses is not the criminalization of younger children but the meaningful and sustained addressing of its root causes in a manner that upholds children’s rights.### 

Reference: 

Atty. Katherine A. Panguban

NUPL Committee on Women and Children Head 

+639566730301

The post NUPL Joins Calls Opposing Proposals to Lower the Minimum Age of Criminal Responsibility appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

The organization resolved to continue defending human rights and confronting violations, attacks, and intimidation directed not only at various sectors but also at its own members.

The two-day event, held on June 20–21, was attended by lawyers from Panay, Eastern Visayas, and Cebu, together with representatives from the NUPL National Office, law student chapters, and paralegals.

The post NUPL Visayas Marks Successful Chapter Assembly appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

According to reports, a male person who identified himself as Fernando Gopilan tried to gain access to Atty. Dannug-Salucon’s condominium unit by pretending to be her nephew. A staff member of the condominium called Atty. Salucon’s daughter, who denied that he is a relative. Upon hearing this, Fernando Gopita left in a hurry.

Before this incident, Atty. Dannug-Salucon has been the subject of surveillance and harassment from suspected state agents. She sought protection by filing a Petition for Writ of Amparo and a Petition for Writ of Habeas Data with the Court of Appeals.

On March 12, 2015, the Court of Appeals issued the privilege of the Writ of Amparo in her favor. The Supreme Court affirmed the issuance of the Writ of Amparo in its decision dated January 24, 2018.

Despite the issuance of the Writ, Atty. Dannug-Salucon still experienced surveillance and harassment from suspected state agents.

In a Manifestation filed in March 2026, Atty. Dannug-Salucon reported to the Court of Appeals the information she received that a certain police officer in her hometown in Isabela was overheard boasting that he was assigned to conduct surveillance on Atty. Dannug-Salucon.

The constant and persistent surveillance on Atty. Dannug-Salucon is alarming. This may be a prelude to a physical attack, which may endanger her life and security.

It is about time to prove that the Writ of Amparo is indeed an effective remedy for the protection of life, liberty, and security. We are holding on to what the Supreme Court said in Bautista vs. Dannug-Salucon (G.R. No. 221862, January 23, 2018) that:

“Even so, it would be uncharacteristic for the courts, especially this Court, to simply fold their arms and ignore the palpable threats to her life, liberty, and security and just wait for the irreversible to happen to her.”

We hope that those required to give protection to Atty. Dannug-Salucon will not “simply fold their arms and ignore the palpable threats to her life, liberty, and security”, and act promptly and not “just wait for the irreversible to happen to her”.

#HandsOffAttyDannugSalucon

#StopAttacksAgainstLawyers

The post NUPL Demands Effective Implementation of Protective Writ for Cagayan Valley People’s Lawyer Amid Continuing Surveillance appeared first on NUPL Philippines.

Read the whole statement here: bit.ly/NUPL_Palparan

The post appeared first on NUPL Philippines.