{"id":13381,"date":"2026-06-12T06:55:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T05:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=13381"},"modified":"2026-06-11T16:51:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T15:51:34","slug":"philippine-court-dismisses-terrorism-financing-charges-against-cernet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/philippine-court-dismisses-terrorism-financing-charges-against-cernet\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippine court dismisses terrorism financing charges against CERNET"},"content":{"rendered":"

After three years of trial, a Cebu City regional trial court dismissed<\/a> the terrorism financing charges against 27 current and former members of the Community Empowerment Resource Network (CERNET), a local non-governmental organization (NGO) on May 15, 2026. The case centered<\/a> on allegations that CERNET provided support to the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People\u2019s Army (CPP-NPA) in 2012.<\/p>\n

The court ruled<\/a> that, at the time the alleged support occurred, the CPP-NPA was not yet officially listed as a terrorist organisation under Philippine law. The Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 (Republic Act 10168) requires<\/a> an official, publicly published designation before any prosecution. Because the CPP-NPA\u2019s designation came<\/a> years after the events in question, the judge found the charges groundless and noted a lack of due process.<\/p>\n

CERNET, joined by human rights advocates and civil society groups, welcomed<\/a> the ruling and said it exposed how counterterrorism laws have been used against humanitarian and development organizations to silence them. They added that NGOs and activists continue to face<\/a> threats, such as the proposed \u201cterror-grooming\u201d bill filed by Senator Ronald dela Rosa.<\/p>\n

CERNET said it would pursue<\/a> accountability for what it described as a baseless and malicious prosecution.<\/p>\n

Despite the court\u2019s decision, CERNET\u2019s bank accounts remain frozen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and other security officials said they respected<\/a> the court\u2019s decision, emphasizing that it rested on technical and procedural grounds, not a declaration of innocence. They stated<\/a> that investigations into terrorism financing will continue, noting that some groups remain under scrutiny for possible links to insurgency funding.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 CERNET 27<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After three years of trial, a Cebu City regional trial court dismissed the terrorism financing charges against 27 current and former members of the Community Empowerment Resource Network (CERNET), a local non-governmental organization (NGO) on May 15, 2026. The case centered on allegations that CERNET provided support to the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":13379,"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-13381","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\/13381","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=13381"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13443,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13381\/revisions\/13443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}