{"id":11146,"date":"2025-04-14T00:55:56","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T23:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=11146"},"modified":"2025-04-12T12:13:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T11:13:01","slug":"terrorism-financing-charges-target-human-rights-advocates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/terrorism-financing-charges-target-human-rights-advocates\/","title":{"rendered":"Terrorism financing charges target human rights advocates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jasmin Jerusalem, executive director of the Leyte Center for Development<\/a> (LCDe), reappeared<\/a> in court on March 25, 2025, after charges against her were reinstated following an appeal by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG). The case was dismissed<\/a> for lack of evidence on December 19, 2024, but has been revived following the court\u2019s approval of the CIDG\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n

The CIDG accuses<\/a> Jerusalem of channeling LCDe resources to members of the CPP-NPA. As a result of the renewed charges, LCDe’s bank accounts and assets have been frozen<\/a>, forcing the organization to temporarily halt its humanitarian and development programs in underserved communities lacking sufficient government support.<\/p>\n

Michael Cabangon, spokesperson for Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) in the Cordillera and a national council member of the labor group, is facing<\/a> charges under the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act (TFPSA) of 2012. He received<\/a> summons from the Department of Justice (DOJ) requiring him to appear before its Manila office on February 17 and 24, 2025, for a preliminary investigation. The case, filed by the CIDG-Cordillera, accuses<\/a> him of providing support to communist rebels based on testimonies from alleged former New People\u2019s Army (NPA) members. Incidents cited include allegedly hosting a witness in 2020 and donating rice to guerrillas in 2017.<\/p>\n

Cabangon, who is also part of the cultural group Ebkas Waya (Speak Free), denies<\/a> the allegations and views the charges as an attempt to suppress activism. KMU and other groups condemned<\/a> the case as politically motivated, while the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance criticized the use of questionable witnesses, calling it a misuse of the law.<\/p>\n

The growing number of cases filed under the TFPSA has attracted<\/a> international scrutiny, with watchdogs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch calling on the government to cease using counterterrorism legislation to target development, humanitarian, and human rights organizations.<\/p>\n

The DOJ reported<\/a> last month that between 2020 and 2024, six individuals were convicted on terrorism financing charges out of 5,557 identified cases while 237 terrorism financing prosecutions have been initiated. These DOJ measures have contributed<\/a> to the removal<\/a> of the Philippines from the so-called \u201cgrey list\u201d of the Financial Action Task Force. However, civil society groups claim<\/a> that this result is linked to a high number of trumped-up terrorism financing charges against non-governmental organizations, development workers and human rights defenders.<\/p>\n

Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a 25 year old Tacloban-based journalist and human rights advocate, also faces<\/a> terrorism financing charges in addition to the original accusations of illegal firearms possession. Together with human rights worker Alexander Philip Abinguna and Rural Missionaries of the Philippines staff Marielle Domequil, Cumpio continues to languish<\/a> in pre-trial detention five years after arrest. They were arrested<\/a> on February 7, 2020, after the signing of the much assailed Executive Order No. 70, a directive which led to the formation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).<\/p>\n

Cumpio\u2019s situation serves as an \u201cemblematic case\u201d for the misuse of laws like the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 and the TFPSA against activists, civil society organizations, and rights defenders, said<\/a> National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) Chairperson Jonathan de Santos.<\/p>\n

Amid growing calls to dismantle repressive state mechanisms, Marcos Jr. reaffirmed<\/a> his commitment to the NTF-ELCAC. Responding to criticism from progressive lawmakers, including Gabriela Party-list Rep. Arlene Brosas, Marcos Jr. declared he would \u201cnever abolish\u201d the task force.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jasmin Jerusalem, executive director of the Leyte Center for Development (LCDe), reappeared in court on March 25, 2025, after charges against her were reinstated following an appeal by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG). The case was dismissed for lack of evidence on December 19, 2024, but has been revived following the court\u2019s approval […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6746,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[73,63,58,59,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktuelles-en","category-human-rights-defenders","category-human-rights-news","category-internal-affairs","category-news-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11146"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11166,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11146\/revisions\/11166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}