Human rights alliance KARAPATAN condemns the terrorism financing case against an indigenous community member in Mountain Province, and raised the alarm on the Marcos Jr. regime’s use of fake witnesses to pin down activists.
Marcylyn Pilala, a member of the Mountain Province Youth Alliance (MPYA) in her youth, and also a former substitute public school teacher, a farmer and storekeeper, from Besao, Mountain Province, is accused by the Ilocos Region police of violating Sections 7 and 8 of Republic Act No. 10168, or the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act (TFPSA) of 2012.
The complaint filed at the Department of Justice National Prosecution Service was based on absurd and fabricated testimonies by spouses Victor and Karen Baltazar, both claiming to be former members of the New People’s Army, that they usually picked up food and grocery items such as canned goods, rice, medicines, bath soaps and personal hygiene kits from Pilala’s sari-sari store. The so-called witnesses also said, based on hearsay, that Pilala received money to her bank account from an unnamed businessman, as instructed by a certain Ka Nero. They alleged that Pilala used the funds to buy supplies.
Pilala, through her legal counsel, has submitted a counter-affidavit in September 2024.
The trumped-up case against Pilala adds up to the more than a hundred false, arbitrary and unjust terrorism-related trumped-up charges against activists, many of which have been dismissed.
It is only clear that the Marcos Jr. regime’s ploy to charge anyone of violations of terrorism financing, as well as violations of the Anti-Terror Act, is pure harassment and a justification to quell political dissent.
As more than a hundred activists have faced complaints or court charges based on these twin terror laws, we raise the alarm to condemn and call for the junking of these harassment suits, and fight against the intensified attacks against human rights and international humanitarian law.