The Center for Trade Union and Human Rights (CTUHR) celebrates with the peasant and human rights movement in the country the acquittal of a peasant organizer who was imprisoned for five years because of trumped-up charges. We hope that this acquittal will encourage courts to junk similar charges that are keeping political prisoners in jail.

Today, January 14, Amanda Echanis, an organizer of the Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women was acquitted by the courts over charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. She was arrested in December 2020 while taking care of her new-born baby.

Echanis, together with the family she was living with, was forced out of the house before military personnel planted the evidence against her – in a room that she and her baby were not occupying at the time. The search warrant was presented only when the raid was already being carried out.

Echanis’ acquittal is the most recent proof that the Rodrigo Duterte regime filed countless trumped-up charges against peasant and social activists. The goal was to prevent them from carrying out their activist duties and empowering the marginalized, which naturally led to being critical of, and opposing, the fascist and anti-people Duterte regime.

The court decision on Amanda also calls attention to the extrajudicial killing of her father, Randall “Ka Randy” Echanis, the 72-year-old peasant advocate and National Democratic Front of the Philippines or NDFP consultant in Novaliches, Quezon City in August 2020. The Echanis family has given so much for the country’s farmers and the government repaid them with nothing but injustice.

We are calling on the country’s courts to speed up the junking of cases filed against political detainees, as their continued detention is part of the injustice and human rights violation committed against activists and the marginalized communities that they serve. Echanis was in jail for five years because of cases that the human rights community in the country has insisted are fabricated.

There are currently 18 political prisoners from the labor movement, who should be freed immediately: Romina Astudillo, Pauline Banjawan, Felixberto Consad, Mark Ryan Cruz, Maritess David, Joel Demate, Tess Dioquino, Jayme Gregorio, Benny Hilamon, Nedo Lagunias, Maoj Maga, Steve Mendoza, Jose Puansing, Nolan Ramos, Bob Reyes, Oliver Rosales, Adelberto Silva, and Marlon Torres.

Most of them are labor activists working with national labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU, May First Movement), which is the main target of the government’s redtagging in the labor movement. Many face trumped-up charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives, and most were arrested and imprisoned under the Duterte presidency.

Read more: https://ctuhr.org/releases/peasant-organizers-acquittal-should-push-courts-to-junk-trumped-up-charges/