KARAPATAN salutes Luis “Ka Louie” Jalandoni, who formerly chaired the Negotiating Panel of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in the peace talks with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP). Ka Louie died in The Netherlands on June 7, 2025 at the age of 90. KARAPATAN extends its deepest condolences to Ka Louie’s wife Coni Ledesma, their son Jose Edmundo “Pendong” Jalandoni and other family members.
To the human rights community as well as advocates of just and lasting peace, Ka Louie leaves a lasting legacy. He will always be remembered for his role in the drafting and signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), the first agreement to be signed in the substantive agenda of the peace talks between the NDFP and the GRP. The CARHRIHL, mutually signed by the principals of both sides, marked a milestone in the struggle to uphold human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) in the Philippines amid a raging armed conflict. Though routinely violated by the GRP, the CARHRIHL was the first document that recognized the existence of a civil war in the Philippines and the need to protect the rights of both the civilians and the opposing parties in this war. Human rights defenders in the Philippines continue to refer to and invoke the CARHRIHL as a major human rights instrument in monitoring violations of human rights and IHL perpetrated by State forces.
Ka Louie has long championed the people’s rights. As a priest active in the church’s social action work in the 1960s, he fought for the rights of sugar workers and sacadas in the face of their brutal oppression and exploitation in the hands of landlords and sugar barons. Coming from the landed class himself, he gave up his riches and distributed the lands he would have inherited to their tenants. This, and his pro-people advocacies that seriously disturbed the firmly entrenched hacienda system and its attendant atrocities earned Ka Louie the ire of both the landlords and State forces.
Finding himself in the crosshairs of the fascists, he went underground upon the declaration of martial law in 1972 and helped establish the Preparatory Committee for a National Democratic Front whose main objective was to unite the Filipino people to overthrow the hated dictatorship.
Ka Louie was arrested with his wife in 1973 and detained for about a year. Upon their release, he and Ka Coni helped organize workers who, under martial law, were banned from exercising their right to strike. The La Tondeña strike of 1975, the first to shatter the terror of martial rule, was an important breakthrough that resulted from the efforts of labor organizers and church activists like Ka Louie.
In 1977, Ka Louie and Ka Coni went to live in exile in The Netherlands to gather support for the Filipino people’s resistance to martial law. They also began working among overseas Filipinos, strengthening previous efforts to organize migrants, address their grievances and advance their rights. It was at this point that Ka Louie became the NDFP’s International Representative.
In 1989, as the designated chief negotiator of the NDFP in the peace talks with the GRP, he helped create the current framework of the formal peace negotiations, stating in The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 that the talks would tackle four substantive agenda—human rights and international humanitarian law, social and economic reforms and political and constitutional reforms before discussions on the end of hostilities and disposition of forces could begin. The first three items in the substantive agenda confront head-on the entire range of the people’s human, economic, civil and political rights—all of which should be comprehensively addressed before peace and justice could reign.
Ka Louie actively supported the campaigns for justice for victims of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, torture, harassment and other consequences of State-sponsored fascist policies. As a former political prisoner during the Marcos dictatorship, he experienced torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment, and thus, after his release from prison, has since supported campaigns for the release of all political prisoners. He and Ka Coni had meaningful interactions and exchanges with human rights workers of Karapatan regarding the impact of militarization especially in rural and indigenous communities.
Throughout his life as an activist and revolutionary, Ka Louie championed peasants, workers’ and migrants’ rights, and fought for the comprehensive rights of the Filipino people.
The entire human rights community pays its highest tribute to Ka Louie, the quintessential human rights defender.