President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s October 28 call to fast-track prisoner releases must be measured against his administration’s record on prison decongestion and human rights, KAPATID said. The political prisoners’ support group challenged the administration to match its pronouncements with concrete action: release political prisoners who have served their sentences or are otherwise entitled to freedom, halt forced prisoner transfers, and stop residents’ evictions amid the planned closure and commercialization of the 366.7-hectare New Bilibid Prison (NBP) reservation by 2028.
During his NBP visit for the 32nd National Correctional Consciousness Week, Marcos called for faster release processing and legal assistance for prisoners who have served their sentences but remain behind bars because of bureaucratic delays or lack of legal representation. As of end-September 2026, the Karapatan database documented 553 political prisoners nationwide. The administration reports 36,842 prisoner releases since July 2022 and 16,179 transfers to other penal farms, but only two political prisoners were recently released following the dismissal of trumped-up charges—not through the administration’s release measures.
KAPATID stressed that genuine decongestion means releasing those entitled to freedom, not simply transferring prisoners and relocating overcrowding to hypercongested penal farms. “Political prisoners must not be made to pay for an unjust system that prolongs their detention and weaponizes the law against activists,” said KAPATID spokesperson Fides Lim.
Lim underscored the justice and urgency of releasing political prisoners nationwide, including the 43 at NBP, some of whom have overserved their sentences, and Vicente Ladlad, whose petition for a writ of habeas corpus is pending before the Supreme Court. She also called for urgent humanitarian consideration for other elderly and seriously ill prisoners and expedited processing of prison records, time allowances, and executive clemency petitions.
“They must not be passed back and forth like a basketball between government agencies while they lose more time behind bars. The government must also stop planting firearms and explosives to frame activists and filing trumped-up financial terrorism charges to persecute them,” Lim said.
The planned NBP closure also threatens long-time residents facing eviction. Residents have reportedly received as many as three eviction notices, with proceedings already underway. KAPATID called for an immediate halt to forced transfers and a moratorium on evictions pending a transparent review of residents’ rights, claims, and remedies.
The group also urged the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to lead a Human Rights Impact Assessment, demand full disclosure of the Bureau of Corrections’ land-use plan, and support a congressional inquiry into the proposed closure and commercialization of the NBP reservation.#
