The legal harassment of anti-mining residents in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya continues. Today, September 24, the Municipal Trial Court of Kasibu and the Regional Trial Court of Bayombong issued separate warrants of arrest against Indigenous People anti-mining leaders Donny Dugay and Municipal Councilor Glenn Guingayan in cases involving cyberlibel and grave coercion.
Fifty-four years after the declaration of Martial Law under the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the Philippines remains locked in a harrowing cycle of state fascism, ecological devastation, and subservience to foreign powers. Today, under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Filipino people still struggle against the same tyrannical framework that plundered our natural resources and suppressed fundamental rights decades ago. The Center for Environmental Concerns – Philippines (CEC) firmly stands with the Filipino people in condemning the persistent human rights violations, environmental plunder, and the betrayal of national sovereignty perpetuated from one Marcos regime to the next.
During the recent presentation of the ₱7.2-trillion national budget 2027 National Expenditure Program (NEP), ₱692.7 billion, or roughly 9.62% of the proposed budget, was allocated to climate adaptation or mitigation, as tagged by government agencies using the Climate Change Expenditure Tagging system. While this increased by a measly 0.07% from the previous year, the Center for Environmental Concerns – Philippines views the budget as greenwashed, grey infrastructure-heavy, prone to corruption, and greatly insufficient to respond to the realities faced by communities most impacted by the climate crisis.
On this International Day of the Disappeared, the Center for Environmental Concerns – Philippines (CEC) stands in solidarity with the families of forcibly disappeared individuals, demanding that all desaparecidos be surfaced and that justice be served in their cases.
Last August 11, at 10:30 PM, members of local organizations forming the People’s Barricade in Pacquetm, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya reported the arrival of more than five members of the Philippine National Police, including the chief of the Kasibu Municipal Police Station. This marks the sixth consecutive day of regular patrolling by armed PNP forces around the community barricade.
As we mark International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the Center for Environmental Concerns – Philippines (CEC) joins Indigenous communities, environmental defenders, and civil society in reiterating the urgent demand to defend ancestral lands, reject Pax Silica and similar foreign-driven extractive agendas, and uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples (IPs) who stand at the frontlines of environmental protection.
