Niezel Velasco, an Indigenous Peoples rights defender and humanitarian worker, was cleared of charges of unjust vexation and maltreatment by the Antipolo City Municipal Trial Court on July 31, 2025. The acquittal affirmed that she is not the same person as the accused “Mary Jane Velasco” or “Mary Jane Someja”. A previous estafa case against her had also been dismissed on July 3 by the Quezon City Court.
Velasco, former project officer of the Bread for Emergency Assistance and Development (BREAD), a disaster response organization, provided emergency assistance and services to the Lumad indigenous peoples in Caraga, Mindanao, prior to the filing of charges against her.
Velasco, along with Julieta Gomez, a Lumad-Manobo woman leader and a council member of Kahugpungan sa mga Lumadnong Organisasyon sa Caraga (KASALO Caraga), was arrested on July 16, 2021 after joint police and military units raided their house in Quezon City. They were charged with murder, attempted murder, illegal possession of firearms and explosives and were detained for almost four years.
The murder and attempted murder charges against Velasco were dismissed by a court in Agusan del Sur in 2022 and 2023, respectively. The remaining charges were dropped due to lack of evidence and they were acquitted in April 2025.
Velasco’s legal team later discovered that she was still facing charges of estafa, unjust vexation, and maltreatment originally filed at the Antipolo Municipal Trial Court. The case, filed against a certain “Mary Jane Velasco,” was transferred to the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court.
Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay said the arrests are clearly part of an escalating and widespread crackdown on activists and human rights defenders in the Caraga region. She attributed this to the counterinsurgency campaign led by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, seemingly also aimed at silencing advocates and preventing them from continuing their work.
Photo © Raffy Lerma