Rights group denounces unrelenting rights violations vs activists
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS RELEASE
December 22, 2025
Reference: Cristina Palabay, KARAPATAN secretary general, 09173162831
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk, 09189790580
Rights group denounces unrelenting rights violations vs activists
KARAPATAN decried the ”unrelenting” human rights violations against activists in Central Visayas, Eastern Visayas and Southern Tagalog the past few weeks.
The latest incident, said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay, involved the unjust arrest on December 20, 2025 of Carmilo Tabada, former staff of Central Visayas Farmers’ Development Center (FARDEC). Tabada was arrested at his residence in Bohol by elements of the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group on trumped-up financing terrorism charges. Tabada currently serves as a councilor of Barangay Poblacion, Trinidad, Bohol.
The trumped-up financing terrorism case against Tabada had already been dismissed in early 2025 for lack of jurisdiction, but was revived recently. Palabay slammed the police’s swift action against activists, in contrast to months of leeway given by the Marcos Jr. government to plunderers before cases are filed and warrants served against them. “This is selective justice, pure and simple, and shows continuing state repression of development workers,” added Palabay.
That same day in Cebu, elements of the 31st Civil-Military Operations Company entered Bonbon National High School to question students if their parents were among the farmers from Sitio Camarin who joined the anti-corruption rally on November 30, 2025. On December 17, 2025, members of San Roque Farmers Association (SRFA) reported being threatened with a military raid on accusations that firearms were being kept in the community. Residents fear that the police would plant evidence in the targeted houses.
Meanwhile, Jeverlyn Seguin, Kasama-TK deputy secretary general and spokesperson, complained that since 2024, she has been harassed, red-tagged, placed under intense surveillance, slandered and vilified by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the 2nd Infantry Division of the Philippine Army and the Philippine National Police. Seguin said that state forces have resorted to flying drones at her residence, and taking pictures of her wherever she goes. “In the worst incident so far involving Seguin,” said Palabay, “she and other research volunteers looking into the effects of El Niño on the livelihoods of sugar farmers in Balayan, Batangas were held at gunpoint in March 2024 by elements of the 59th IBPA.”
Elsewhere in Southern Tagalog, students running for positions in the University Student Council of the University of the Philippines in Los Baños were threatened in a spurious Facebook account. In a thinly veiled threat, the poster said he hoped that the candidates, whose pictures were shown, would not end up like other student activists who died in alleged armed encounters with the military.
In Eastern Visayas, state agents paid an unwanted visit to the home of Axell Bergula, a member of Kabataan Partylist (KPL)-Tacloban, a day after he joined the anti-corruption rally last November 30, 2025. The state agents tried to interrogate Bergula. Accused of being the finance officer of the KPL, he was threatened with arrest and detention. The attempt to interrogate him was repeated on December 15, 2025 on campus. The harassment has persisted even after he filed a complaint with the Commission on Human Rights.
“These deplorable incidents occurring around the time International Human Rights Day was being marked all over the world just goes to show the contempt the Marcos Jr. regime has for the people’s human rights,” concluded Palabay.
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publi...@karapatan.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties. It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.