The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) celebrates the temporary release from detention of public unionist Tonette Dizon on July 2, after the courts dismissed 13 out of the 17 trumped-up cases filed against her and allowed her to post bail for the remaining four cases.

The release of Dizon, former director of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) from 1986 to 2003 as well as founder and former deputy secretary-general of public union center Confederation for the Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (COURAGE), is good news to government employees, all workers and Filipinos and to labor and human rights.

Dizon’s release highlights the injustice of her arrest in September 2019 and subsequent detention, the military’s harassment of her since 2015, and the filing of trumped-up charges against her to prevent her from fulfilling her roles in the fight for labor and human rights. It also calls attention to the Supreme Court’s junking of her plea for protection in 2015 from which lessons must be learned.

The junking of the charges filed against her and, we trust, the future junking of the remaining charges, further expose the modus operandi of the military and the government, especially under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, of fabricating charges and planting evidence against activists in order to jail them and hinder rights activism in the country.

Most of the current 22 political prisoners from the labor movement suffered the same injustice that Dizon faced. Maoj Maga, organizer of national labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and progressive drivers’ organization Pagkakaisa ng mga Tsuper at Operators Nationwide (PISTON), was one of the first to be arrested on trumped-up charges and has been in jail for seven years now.

We reiterate the observation made by Ms. Irene Khan, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression: “the pace of judicial procedures is remarkably slow, extending the pretrial detention period to such an extent that it is sometimes equivalent to a conviction. Prolonged pretrial detention, the refusal to grant bail when there is no risk of flight and the extremely slow disposal of cases, especially when trumped-up charges are later dismissed by the judiciary, make a travesty of justice, equating the innocent with the guilty.”

We are calling on the Ferdinand Marcos Jr government to take urgent measures to look into the situation of political prisoners from the labor movement and all political prisoners. The injustice that they suffer from should be ended with their freedom and the junking of the fabricated charges filed against them.