Land is Life wishes to express its deepest concern about the ongoing deterioration of human rights situation in the Philippines, particularly on the filing of a trumped-up case against Windel Bolinget, Chairperson of our long-time trusted partner the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and a member of the Land is Life Global Steering Committee. We are alarmed at the intensified smear and harassment campaign against the CPA and other Indigenous activists and leaders. The CPA is an independent federation of grassroots-based organizations among Indigenous communities in the northern Cordillera Region, committed to the promotion and defense of Indigenous peoples’ rights, human rights, social justice, and national freedom and democracy.

The campaign aims to falsely link CPA´s activists to the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army, which were declared as terrorist organizations by the government in December 2018. This practice, known as “red-tagging”, is a political tactic to stifle dissent in the Philippines that frequently targets human rights organizations and Indigenous activists, church or religious groups, academics and journalists. 

Even the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz was subjected to the same range of fake accusations and attacks by the Philippine Government back in 2019.    

As the world commemorated the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on December 10, Indigenous defenders in the Cordillera region were subjected to a widespread attack in Baguio City, with defamation on social media and posters maligning the CPA Chairperson Windel Bolinget, Land is Life´s Asia Program Director Bestang Dekdeken and other activists. Soon after, right before Christmas, we learned that an arrest warrant was issued for Windel Bolinget based on a trumped-up case of murder. Bolinget was among the signatories of a petition filed at the Philippine Supreme Court against the Anti-Terrorism Law in August 2020. 

As the Anti-Terrorism Law's constitutionality is currently being challenged at the Supreme Court by multiple organizations, Indigenous leaders and activists from the CPA fear that the smear campaign is a retaliation for their work defending Indigenous rights in the Philippines, and part of a widespread strategy to harm their public image and create an excuse to justify human rights violations, such as false indictments, arbitrary detentions and even extrajudicial executions, as has happened previously in several cases in the country.

Land is Life stands in solidarity with the Cordillera Peoples Alliance and other Indigenous leaders and activists in the Philippines, that are currently being subjected to defamation, attacks, detentions and other forms of state persecution. Land is Life strongly condemns these practices and calls on the Philippine government to unrestrictedly respect the human rights of Indigenous leaders and activists throughout the country.