As the country commemorates International Workers’ Day on the 1st of May, KARAPATAN salutes Filipino workers for their continuing struggle to advance the rights of the working class in the Philippines.
Workers who actively advocate for their rights have always been in the crosshairs of the repressive State in cahoots with greed-driven big business interests.
On September 9, 2023, veteran trade union organizer Jude Thaddeus Fernandez was extrajudicially killed (EJK) in the house he was staying in Binangonan, Rizal by policemen who were allegedly serving him a warrant. No one has been held accountable for his brutal murder.
On April 10, 2024, William Lariosa, a long-time organizer of plantation workers in Mindanao, was seized by elements of the 48th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army in Quezon, Bukidnon. Prior to this, he had been red-tagged and he and his family harassed to convince him to surrender as an armed rebel. He remains missing to date.
There are at least 23 political prisoners from the workers’ movement languishing in various detention centers nationwide. They include National Democratic Front of the Philippines consultants Adelberto Silva and Renante Gamara, trade union organizers Maojo Maga and Alexander Reyes, and public sector union organizers Antonietta Dizon and Oliver Rosales. Two of the worker political prisoners were arrested under the Marcos Jr. regime. On October 27, 2024, Gavino Panganiban, Director for Campaigns of the Kilusang Mayo Uno-affiliated Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan (PAMANTIK), and Maritess David, a labor organizer of the Organized Labor Association in Line Industries and Agriculture-Kilusang Mayo Uno (Olalia-KMU) were arrested in Makati City.
Without exception, all of them are facing trumped-up charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives based on planted evidence and the perjured testimonies of bogus witnesses. On top of this, a number of them also face manufactured cases of murder, arson, rebellion and the like.
As part of his PR gimmickry, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. issued Executive Order 23 (EO 23) in July 2023 creating an inter-agency committee ostensibly tasked to probe the extrajudicial killings and harassment of workers. But this Marcos creation has been utterly useless since its inception.
In fact, it was the current regime’s Department of Justice that threw out the murder complaints against the policemen involved in the brutal killings of union leader Manny Asuncion and activist couple Ariel and Anna Mariz Evangelista in January and March of 2023. The three are among the nine activists killed in the Bloody Sunday incident of March 7, 2021.
Nothing good for the Filipino workers can be expected of the Marcos Jr. regime which has perpetuated the same repressive policies imposed by the Duterte regime. Even in the area of economic rights and welfare for the working people, Marcos Jr. adheres to the same decades-old neoliberal policies that have kept wages low, suppressed union rights and systematically demolished the workers movement’s hard-won gains.
KARAPATAN is in full solidarity with Filipino workers as they militantly defy an increasingly hostile political climate and continue fighting to advance their rights and welfare.