Two activists were arrested in separate operations in Bohol and Baguio last December 2025 under the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10168).<\/p>\n
On December 20, 2025, Carmilo Tabada, 56, a former staff member of the Central Visayas Farmers\u2019 Development Center (FARDEC) and current barangay councilor in Trinidad, Bohol, was apprehended<\/a> by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG)\u2013Bohol Provincial Field Unit. Tabada faces<\/a> charges under Republic Act No. 10168. The court later granted<\/a> him bail of 200,000 Pesos for temporary release.<\/p>\n The same charge against Tabada was already dismissed<\/a> by a Bohol court for lack of jurisdiction mid-2025.<\/p>\n A week later, on December 27, 2025, Michael Cabangon, a Cordillera labor leader and cultural worker, was arrested<\/a> at his Baguio home due to a terrorism financing charge (based on testimonies by \u201cmilitary assets\u201d). Cabangon serves<\/a> as regional coordinator of the labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU)\u2013Cordillera and organizes the drivers\u2019 group PISTON Metro-Baguio. He also fronts for the progressive band Ebkas Waya (Speak Free).<\/p>\n Cabangon was freed<\/a> after posting bail at the Regional Trial Court a couple of days later.<\/p>\n Human rights group Karapatan Central Visayas criticized<\/a> Tabada\u2019s arrest, noting that a similar case filed earlier had been dismissed by a Bohol court for lack of jurisdiction. The group said<\/a> the arrest reflects a pattern of repression under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., targeting development workers, peasant advocates, and community leaders through legal harassment, so-called \u201cred-tagging\u201d (i.e., accusing individuals or organizations of supporting or being a member of the communist rebel group New People\u2019s Army), and recycled charges.<\/p>\n KMU Cordillera and the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance condemned<\/a> Cabangon\u2019s arrest as part of an emerging trend of using counter-terrorism laws to intimidate activists.\u00a0 Dapayan ti Kultura iti Kordilyera (DKK), an internationally recognized cultural workers\u2019 alliance in the region, described<\/a> it as \u201csystematic repression\u201d by the administration. The Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) dismissed<\/a> the allegations against Cabangon as \u201cfalse and baseless\u201d and called<\/a> on the public to stand with them in denouncing the incident.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, to mark International Human Rights Day, the Akbayan bloc in the House of Representatives filed<\/a> two bills aimed at addressing human rights abuses under previous administrations.<\/p>\n House Bill No. 6677, the Extrajudicial Killings Victims Recognition and Reparation Act, seeks<\/a> to recognize atrocities committed during former President Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s so-called \u201cwar on drugs,\u201d provide reparations to victims, and establish a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate these violations. House Bill No. 6678, the Human Rights Defenders Protection Act, aims<\/a> to protect human rights workers and organizations from harassment, violence, \u201cred-tagging,\u201d arbitrary detention, and other forms of abuse.<\/p>\n Akbayan lawmakers stressed<\/a> the importance of these measures in preventing human rights violations from becoming normalized. Similar proposals were blocked<\/a> under the Duterte administration.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Carmilo Tabada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two activists were arrested in separate operations in Bohol and Baguio last December 2025 under the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10168). On December 20, 2025, Carmilo Tabada, 56, a former staff member of the Central Visayas Farmers\u2019 Development Center (FARDEC) and current barangay councilor in Trinidad, Bohol, was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":12591,"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-12579","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\/12579","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=12579"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12592,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12579\/revisions\/12592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}