Tanggol Bayi, an organization of women human rights defenders, joins activists from KARAPATAN, Samahan ng Ex-detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (SELDA), the Free Amanda Echanis Movement, Tanggol Magsasaka, Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women, GABRIELA, Kilusang Mayo Uno, Bai Indigenous Women’s Network, and˰the Ecumenical Women’s Forum in renewing the call to release women political prisoners, especially the sick and the elderly. We issue this urgent call before the Department of Justice, two days before International Women’s Day.
Out of the 761 political prisoners in the country, 157 are women. These women are not criminals. They are human rights defenders, activists and leaders in the struggle for genuine democracy and social justice. They include workers, peasants, urban poor, writers and students, among others.
They are mothers, sisters, daughters and wives cruelly wrenched from their families by the State that has ordered their unjust arrest and imprisonment on trumped-up charges. Their rightful place is with the struggling people, not in the bleak prison cells where they have been unjustly remanded.
Many of them are elderly, frail and facing serious ailments compounded by the harsh conditions in the country’s jails and prisons. Yet they are often not given consideration for their age and health condition and many are without adequate medical care.
One of them—Cristina Garcia Miguel—died of lung cancer at the age of 67 at the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology Facility in Tuguegarao City on November 20, 2023 after four years of detention. She was never granted access to appropriate medical treatment.
Among the country’s women political prisoners is Loida Magpatoc, a consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) who is detained at the Bukidnon Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center. The country’s oldest political prisoner is 80-year old Rosita Taboy, who was arrested on May 26, 2023 in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan where she and her husband Antonio Legaspi were long-time residents. Taboy was widowed when her husband died of a heart attack in his jail cell in April 2024. Currently held at the Bulacan Provincial Jail, Taboy suffers from diabetes and hypertension and finds it difficult to walk without assistance.
Another ailing woman political prisoner is 74-year-old Virginia Villamor, who suffered a stroke and temporarily lost consciousness in September last year and was confined for several days at the Taguig-Pateros District Hospital and the National Kidney and Transplant Institute. At the Taguig-Pateros District Hospital, she endured having to sit in a wheelchair for days at the emergency room because despite being a stroke patient, she was refused the use of a bed for not being “sick enough”.
Even the younger women political prisoners have had to endure not just the injustice of their detention but the pain of being torn away from their children. Cagayan-based peasant organizer and writer Amanda Echanis, now 35, was with her month-old baby when she was arrested in her home on December 2, 2020. Unable to witness the milestones in her child’s development, she finds solace in, and maintains her militancy by writing poetry behind bars.
Despite the brutal conditions of their detention, the courage and unwavering commitment of our sisters in struggle to the cause of democracy and social justice remain unshaken.
We salute their sacrifices, their strength, and their militancy, and we stand in solidarity with them.
We demand that the Marcos Jr. regime immediately end the persecution of our sisters in the struggle for fighting for a just and democratic society. In the name of justice and fairness, we call for the release on humanitarian grounds of all women political prisoners, especially the ailing, the elderly and the long-detained.
Free our sisters!
Free all political prisoners!