{"id":13038,"date":"2026-04-20T06:55:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T05:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=13038"},"modified":"2026-04-17T13:55:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T12:55:35","slug":"child-rights-advocate-acquitted-of-rebellion-after-conviction-built-on-15-year-old-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/child-rights-advocate-acquitted-of-rebellion-after-conviction-built-on-15-year-old-warrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Child rights advocate acquitted of rebellion after conviction built on 15-year-old warrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Philippine Court of Appeals has acquitted<\/a> Salome “Nanay Sally” Ujano, a prominent women’s and child rights advocate, releasing her after more than four years in detention on rebellion charges. The ruling from March 23, 2026, overturned a 2024 Taguig Regional Trial Court conviction that had sentenced her to 10 to 17 years in prison. The appellate court found<\/a> that prosecutors failed to establish her guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt,” stating that the evidence fell short of “the required moral certainty” needed for a rebellion conviction, a ruling that critics of the case had long called for.<\/p>\n

Ujano was arrested<\/a> in November 2021 after the Philippine National Police served a 2006 warrant. She was accused<\/a> of involvement in a 2005 military ambush in Quezon Province – \u00a0allegations her family called baseless. At the time of the alleged crime, Ujano was serving<\/a> as executive director of the Women’s Crisis Centre, where she promoted protections against domestic violence. She later became<\/a> national coordinator of Philippines Against Child Trafficking, the role she held at the time of her arrest.<\/p>\n

The Court of Appeals identified three fundamental failures in the case against Ujano.<\/p>\n

The two key military witnesses – Sergeants Alex Ayupan and Clodualdo Casanova – claimed<\/a> to have recognized Ujano during a firefight involving approximately 60 members of the rebellion group New People\u2019s Army (NPA). Their identification came<\/a> 17 years after the incident. The CA described<\/a> this as “an extraordinary lapse,” dealing a major blow to the reliability of their testimony.<\/p>\n

The identification procedure was found<\/a> to be suggestive. Both witnesses admitted<\/a> they recognized Ujano because her photo had been displayed in military camps as an alleged “most wanted” leader of the NPA prior to their testimony. The court warned<\/a> that such prior exposure could cause a witness to associate a face in a photograph with a person seen during a stressful event – meaning what appeared to be a confident identification may have been nothing more than recognition of a photograph.<\/p>\n

The witnesses also failed to file a prompt, sworn statement following the 2005 event, thereby skipping<\/a> a basic and necessary step in the evidence gathering process.<\/p>\n

Together, the court said, these failures rendered<\/a> the identification of Ujano “highly questionable” and insufficient to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n

Amnesty International Philippines welcomed<\/a> the acquittal but called the case “a clear miscarriage of justice,” urging<\/a> the government to pass the Human Rights Defenders Protection Act and to review the implementation of the Anti-Terrorism Act that has been widely used to criminalize human rights defenders.<\/p>\n

The acquittal came<\/a> just two days after the Philippines was added to the CIVICUS Monitor watchlist for rapidly eroding civic freedoms. The country already held<\/a> a “Repressed” rating – the second lowest possible. CIVICUS Monitor Asia researcher Josef Benedict warned<\/a> that the crackdown has “a chilling effect for many in the Philippines who seek to speak out and organize.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

The Philippine Court of Appeals has acquitted Salome “Nanay Sally” Ujano, a prominent women’s and child rights advocate, releasing her after more than four years in detention on rebellion charges. The ruling from March 23, 2026, overturned a 2024 Taguig Regional Trial Court conviction that had sentenced her to 10 to 17 years in prison. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":13016,"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":[73,63,58,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktuelles-en","category-human-rights-defenders","category-human-rights-news","category-news-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13038","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=13038"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13099,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13038\/revisions\/13099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}