📷: Amanda Echanis | Free Amanda Echanis Movement
by Diego Morra
Human rights alliance Karapatan has welcomed the acquittal of Amanda Echanis on Jan. 14, 2026, from the baseless and politically-motivated charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives lodged against her.
Amanda Echanis, a peasant advocate, organizer, writer and the daughter of martyred activist and peace consultant Randall Echanis, was also elected to the University Student Council of the University of the Philippines while she was detained after her illegal arrest in December 2020 in Baggao, Cagayan.
Karapatan said the case against Echanis was typical of the state’s modus operandi that starts with wholesale red-tagging, with the National Task Force Against Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) coercing various groups to denounce their targets and the military and police fabricating evidence and testimony to nail activists on non-bailable criminal offenses.
Aside from Karapatan, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) lauded the acquittal, saying Amanda and her baby should not have been subjected to a harrowing ordeal inasmuch as the evidence the prosecutors produced on behalf of the police and military came from a poisoned tree. The so-called evidence, Kabataan partylist argued, had no legal leg to stand on while Gabriela and Artists for a Just Peace described the evidence against her as “planted and invalid.” On this basis alone, the Free Amanda Echanis Movement stressed, her arrest was illegal and arbitrary.
Bayan Muna said the Echanis case showed that the Marcos Jr. administration continues to play the Duterte handbook in dealing with activists, peasant and union organizers as well as those who oppose a political system that thrives on graft and corruption and maintains its rule by exploiting and oppressing the marginalized sectors to amass profits. Bayan Muna, which celebrates its 40th anniversary as it welcomes Echanis, said her arrest is typical of the “reyd-tanim-kulong” (raid-plant-detain) modus operandi employed since the Marcos Sr. dictatorship. In other cases, the state has used walking skeletons and firearms with similar serial numbers as evidence in separate cases.
Following the acquittal and release of Echanis, Karapatan, the National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates Youth (NNARA Youth) and the Free Amanda Echanis Movement demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners, arguing that standing for human rights and land reform is not a crime. Dozens of similar cases have been dismissed by various courts, with judges scratching their heads about testimonies that were downright illogical and contradictory to the evidence adduced.
KMP, Karapatan and other organizations also pressed for the compensation of all activists who had been imprisoned for years and eventually acquitted because of malicious prosecution based on fabricated charges. They called for a thorough investigation into the murder of Randall Echanis, Amanda’s father who was also a peace negotiator and KMP leader, in August 2020. The law on restitution of illegally arrested and prosecuted suspects lacks the teeth to defang wayward policemen and soldiers who have been on a frenzy arresting activists illegally. The case of the unpaid Aeta farmers who were tortured into admitting they were guerrillas is a case in point. Despite their acquittal, the state found it beneath its dignity to compensate them.
There will be more blackeyes for the Marcos Jr. regime unless it abides by the law and the rules of evidence rather than rely on shortcuts that end up torpedoing their own cases. Are they operating on the basis of a quota system? Like true fascists, they must be committed to the motto of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera of Falange Espanola in the 1930s: Uno de los nuestros vale por todos los vuestros. This translates to “one of ours is worth all of yours, which is now the guiding principle of the bloody Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of Donald Trump and Kristi Noem.) Only that the more they do it, the more an enraged citizenry fights back as they remember Rosa Luxemburg’s quip: Those who do not move do not notice their chains.
