The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) strongly condemns the arrest, based on trumped-up charges, of Jayvee “Jay” S. Apiag, a former leading human rights worker in Southern Mindanao and currently a law student. We are calling for the junking of the trumped-up charges filed against him and for his immediate release.

Like the entire activist and human rights movement in the country, we know Jay Apiag. As a former staff member and then secretary-general of human rights organization Karapatan in Southern Mindanao in 2016-2021, he was active in defending the labor and human rights of workers and the poor in the region. We have looked forward to working with him in the future, when he becomes a lawyer after his current studies in the Cor Jesu College-School of Law.

Jay Apiag is a human rights worker who worked and resided in the urban centers of Southern Mindanao. He supported many human rights victims and their families, trained many human rights workers, and organized quick reaction teams and fact-finding missions across the region. He is an exemplary activist, human rights worker and Filipino and should be honored, not imprisoned.

Jay Apiag is not the only victim of arrest and detention based on trumped-up charges in the country. There are currently 755 political prisoners in the Philippines, 27 of whom are labor activists. Arresting and imprisoning activists based on trumped-up charges is one of the main forms that the Rodrigo Duterte regime used in attacking people’s organizations and weakening opposition to its murderous rule. We are revolted that it is continuing under the Ferdinand Marcos Jr regime, which tries to distance itself from its predecessor in human rights.

Human rights workers should be able to carry out their tasks without fear of government reprisal. They should not be targeted for any form of reprisal. They provide important checks to government abuse and support to human rights victims. Without them, the government degenerates into authoritarianism and autocracy, and citizens’ right to freedom of expression, association, assembly and other basic rights are imperilled. Without them, workers’ rights to form unions and fight for their labor rights are placed in serious danger.

We call on President Marcos Jr: directly intervene into the cases of arrest and detention using trumped-up charges involving human rights workers, labor activists and other social activists. If you are indeed sincere in upholding human rights and democracy in the country, ensure political prisoners’ immediate release from prison, the junking of trumped-up charges against them, and their free operation, unhindered by fear of, and actual, government reprisal.