MANILA – A left-wing human rights organization accuses the Philippine security forces of killing nine activists on Sunday during coordinated raids in four provinces.
Cristina Palabay, the leader of the rights group Karapatan, said the raids were carried out at the activists’ homes and offices. Two of the victims, a couple, died when their ten-year-old son hid under a bed, she said.
A government spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment, but a security official confirmed that nine people had been killed in raids carried out jointly by the army and Philippine national police. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.
GMA News, a police spokesman, said a police spokesman, lt.col. Chitadel Gaoiran, confirmed the death.
Me. Palabay said the killings took place in the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Rizal, all in the southern part of Luzon Island, near Manila. She said the activists killed had worked for a variety of organizations, including a group working on behalf of Filipino fishermen and another campaigning for the rights of the urban poor.
“Nothing could be more appropriate than calling this day a ‘Bloody Sunday,'” she said. Palabay said in a statement. She said the killings were part of a “murderous campaign of state terror” by the government of President Rodrigo Duterte to quell legal disagreements, and she called on the country’s independent human rights commission to investigate the raids.
Three activists were arrested during the raids, including a lawyer who worked for Karapatan. Palabay said.
Duterte and other leading Philippine officials, including military and police commanders, accused Karapatan and other left-wing groups of having ties to a protracted communist uprising in the country. Karapatan and similar groups denied involvement in the violence.
Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Asia at Human Rights Watch, said his organization was “seriously concerned” about the reports of the raids, which he said were “clearly” part of the government’s anti-communist rebel campaign.
“The fundamental problem is that this campaign no longer distinguishes between armed rebels and non-competitive activists, labor leaders and rights defenders,” Robertson said in a statement.
On Friday, two days before the raids, Mr. Duterte urges the Philippine security forces to kill communists in battle. “I told the army and the police that if they find themselves in an armed encounter with the communist rebels, they should kill them, make sure you kill them, and finish them alive,” he said. .
The Philippines’s Communist Party has issued a statement calling on its armed wing, the New People’s Army, which has been leading an uprising since 1969, to punish the perpetrators and masterminds behind the report.