SELDA: Hands off Adora Faye de Vera!
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS RELEASE
November 14, 2025
Reference: Bonifacio Ilagan, SELDA Spokesperson
SELDA: Hands off Adora Faye de Vera!
The Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainee Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (SELDA) condemns in the strongest terms the harassment of former political prisoner Adora Faye de Vera, charging that the state should instead train its guns on corrupt bureaucrats.
The 69-year old De Vera, a prolific writer, poet and researcher, reported to SELDA that she was visited at her residence around noon of November 7, 2025 by two persons, one of them a woman. These persons refused to identify themselves, insisted they were at the right address and merely gave a description of a woman they were looking for, ostensibly to talk to her about her “insurance.” They likewise did not answer when De Vera asked them what insurance company they were from.
De Vera talked to the two persons only through a peephole on her door and refused to disclose any personal information since they did not identify themselves.
“I recalled the time I was arrested in August 2022,” she said. “Two women who claimed to be from the Bureau of Fire Protection knocked on my door, saying they smelled marijuana smoke from my unit. I opened the door to tell them there were no illegal substances in my room.” Minutes later, the women barged into her unit with several men, dragged De Vera to a waiting vehicle and brought her by plane to Iloilo. “I had been detained for three days before they showed me a warrant,” she said.
For De Vera, who had survived abduction, rape and torture under martial law, it was her fourth arrest. She was unjustly detained in an Iloilo jail for close to two years until she was eventually acquitted of the trumped-up murder, frustrated murder and rebellion charges slapped against her.
She is currently an active member of SELDA and Desaparecidos (Adora’s husband Manuel Manaog was forcibly disappeared in June 1990). She has joined protests calling for justice and accountability against massive government corruption, in between rehabilitation and therapy sessions for a painful leg condition. When the pain becomes unbearable, she walks with a cane.
“Is ‘insurance’ the military’s new pretext for illegally gaining entry into Adora’s home to do her harm?” asked SELDA spokesperson Bonifacio Ilagan. Ilagan, who had also received death threats in early 2023, said, “This nefarious practice of targeting former political prisoners for harassment and persecution must stop.”
“The government should focus on jailing the corrupt and lay its hands off human rights defenders and former political prisoners like Adora,” he concluded.
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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.