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The dismissal of the charges against Aetas Japer Gurung and Junior Ramos “clearly show how the Anti-Terrorism Act is being used to fabricate charges against individuals and arbitrarily tag them as ‘terrorists,’” human rights alliance Karapatan said on Monday, as it slammed the statement of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) on the said dismissal.

More than a week before Pres. Rodrigo Duterte’s last State of the Nation Address, rights group Karapatan called to stop the killings anew in a protest action at the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) office in Quezon City, and said that the president’s last SONA is a “day of reckoning” for victims of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

On July 9, 2021, the legal counsel of detained peasant organizer Ernesto Jude Rimando filed a motion for urgent medical confinement at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 80, asking the court to allow him to be treated at the Philippine General Hospital and for him to stay there until medically discharged by attending doctor and the hospital.

Karapatan notes the recent resolution of the Supreme Court on rules on the use of body-worn cameras in the execution of warrants as a product of relentless and persistent justice-seeking efforts of victims of human rights violations, lawyers, activists, and other civil libertarians, while we lament that such action came after numerous cases of killings, arbitrary arrests and detention and other rights violations in the government’s war on drugs and counterinsurgency campaigns.

“[We should] defend [our rights], or else we are bound to lose them.”

This was one of Jose Jaime “Nonoy” Espina’s messages that manifested his determination in fighting for people’s rights and civil liberties. In the midst of the calls to reject the government’s “terror law” last year, he was asked this question: “What does freedom mean to you?”