Urgent alert from Karapatan - Caraga: 59-year-old cancer-striken farmer Marcela “Silay” Diaz, an active member of Kapunungan sa mga Mag-uuma sa Surigao del Sur - Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, was arrested by the police yesterday, May 14, in Marihatag, Surigao del Sur. Marcela Diaz was served with a warrant of arrest on a fabricated robbery case filed in Lianga, Surigao del Sur. She has been suffering from Stage 4 cancer since 2016 and she underwent medical treatment then stayed home since her remission from her cancer treatment in 2019.

Thread: police brutality in the Philippines didn’t start under Rodrigo Duterte and they aren’t isolated cases: the Philippine National Police has long been a rotten institution since policing was built as an apparatus of repression—to serve and protect colonialism and capitalism. This is clear in our history and in the history of modern policing in general: the gendarmerie Philippine Constabulary, the Philippine National Police’s predecessor, was formed in 1901 for colonial subjugation: to crush anti-colonial guerrillas and anti-imperialist labor unions.

Why should we say #NoToRedTagging? Antonio Parlade Jr. and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict are deliberately twisting facts and spreading lies against the Left to justify the government's crackdown on dissent. Here's a short thread of some fast facts: Legal democratic forces—among them mass organizations, alliances, and duly-elected party-lists—are not "fronts" of communists rebels. The act of red-tagging peddles this dangerous lie that infringes upon international humanitarian law and the people's right to freely organize.

#RememberKian brings me back to covering his funeral three years ago as I stood before his tombstone and found out that we share the same birthday; what was more tragic for me was finding out from his friends mere moments after he was buried that he wanted to become a policeman. I remember Kian Loyd Delos Santos' father, Saldy, as I was writing my thesis on the depiction of state violence in FPJ's Ang Probinsyano. I remember his father in tears, telling before a Senate hearing how his son wanted to be a policeman because of the teleserye. #RememberKian

Warning: this is a graphic on-ground footage of the fatal shooting incident in Pasong Putik yesterday, currently circulating on Facebook.

After the police shot the victim twice, a nearby resident can be heard screaming: “Bakit niyo binaril, sir? Dapat kinapkapan niyo muna!” An alleged copy of the police report of the incident states that the police recovered a loaded revolver from the victim’s sling bag. Witnesses cited by CNN’s report, however, claim that the victim had no firearms. The victim’s sister also reiterated this in a GMA News interview.

“This is not martial law,” the president says.

This is true, in the legal sense: the president did not declare one in the first place—and it can only be declared if there is rebellion (there is an ongoing one for the past 51 years), an invasion, or if required by public safety. But then, the president treats the pandemic like an invasion, like a rebellion, like an insurgency—in short, war. It seems to be this regime’s favorite word, such that the state of national emergency becomes translated as a “state of war against an unseen enemy.”