The military and police have revived their bloody effort to prevent labor unions in the Southern Tagalog region from demanding higher wages and better working conditions by harassing labor organizers and union leaders after the Bloody Sunday Massacre on March 7, 2021 in which nine activists were killed and six arrested in Laguna and Cavite.
In the latest case, Antonio Fajardo, acting chairperson of the Pagkakaisa ng Manggagawa sa Timog Katagalugan – KMU (PAMANTIK-KMU), said labor leaders Gavino Panganiban and Maritess David were arrested in Makati City on Oct. 27, 2024 and slapped with trumped-up charges. Fajardo said human rights groups and progressive organizations in Southern Tagalog protested the arrests and picketed the Department of National Defense (DND.) They warned that the police were acting at the behest of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), which implements the covert operations of the DND and a gaggle of intelligence units.
The Bloody Sunday Massacre happened two days after former president Rodrigo Duterte demanded that the activists be neutralized and three years after he institutionalized the slaughter of activists and supporters of the revolutionary movement through Memorandum Circular No. 32. This circular led to joint military and police operations in the Bicol provinces, Negros Island and the Samar provinces, with up to 15,000 soldiers being deployed in those provinces. Under Executive Order No. 70 issued in 2018, Duterte created NTF-ELCAC to wreak havoc nationwide as the spearhead of the US-crafted “whole of nation counter-insurgency approach.”
PAMANTIK-KMU said the police and military are experts in planting firearms and explosives and charging activists and labor leaders with possessing firearms and explosives, which are non-bailable offenses. This is exactly what is happening in the case of the Panganiban and David. This dog-eared tactic was also employed to magically create firearms and explosives as “egregious evidence” to justify the 2021 raid at the Alyansa ng Manggagawa sa Engklabo office in Santa Rosa, Laguna. Needless to say, NTF-ELCAC, the police and military are also into side hustles as servitors of foreign companies at enclaves known as “economic zones.”
In the Bloody Sunday Massacre, the Department of Justice dismissed the complaint for murder against 17 policemen for the murder of labor leader Emmanuel Asuncion in 2021 in Cavite. The 23-page resolution issued in January 2023 said the complaint filed by Asuncion’s wife, Liezl, was “dismissed for insufficiency of evidence.” Shedding crocodile tears, the prosecutors mournfully said: “We lament the demise of Emmanuel Asuncion. However, complainant and the evidence she submitted failed to discharge the obligation to prove the existence of a crime and identify the perpetrators. In the absence of proof, there could be no probable cause to charge the respondents.”
Fajardo said the continuing attacks on organized is the continuation of the Duterte policy of waging war against the Filipino people. “Ito ang itsura ng crackdown sa panahon ni Marcos Jr., at walang ibang may utak sa operasyong ito kundi ang DND, 2nd Infantry Division, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Philippine National Police (PNP) at Joint Task Force (JTF) Katagalugan para supilin ang mga tagapagtaguyod ng mga karapatan ng manggagawa,” he added.
The PAMANTIK-KMU leader added that the PNP’s actions in coordination with the AFP and NTF-ELCAC are part and parcel of the US-inspired total war policy that uses graft-ridden military budgets as pork barrel for generals and disburses local government money to subsidize military units deployed in rural communities. In the Southern Tagalog region, these counterinsurgency units also freelance to protect foreign corporate interests by preventing labor organizing. This is the context of the arrest of Panganiban and David. Both of them should be released and the charges against them thrown out.
“Hanggang ngayon, hindi pa rin natutugunan ang kagyat na pangangailangan ng mga manggagawa. Lalo silang lubog sa kahirapan, walang trabaho, mahal na bilihin at kontraktwalisasyon. At ito ang pilit na pinatatanggap ni Marcos Jr. sa mga Pilipino kapag dinadaan nila ang mga manggagawa sa matinding crackdown ng estado,” Fajardo argued. Indeed, poverty and hunger levels have risen in Metro Manila and Southern Luzon, with the real inflation rate breaching 25% and the Marcos Jr. administration unable to provide such basic needs as food, even as it continues to mindlessly import rice and maintain the rice-producing country’s ignominious role as the world’s biggest rice importer.
