Alarmed by the gravity and impunity with which human rights and international humanitarian laws are being violated by the US-Marcos regime specifically in peasant and indigenous communities, faith-based leaders, human rights defenders, academia, lawyers, writers and artists, environmental advocates, peasants, and representatives from Indigenous and Moro communities launched last September 6 in Manila, the Manindigan (Stand Firm) Network to fight escalating human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) violations.
Bishop Gerardo Alminaza, chairperson of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines–Episcopal Commission on Social Action, Justice, and Peace and head of Caritas Philippines, serves as lead convenor of Manindigan. He emphasized, “Communities, especially in rural and Indigenous areas, continue to suffer from bombings, harassment, and militarization. MANINDIGAN is a call to stand up for the people whose lives and dignity are being trampled by state terror funded with people’s money.”
According to Ang Bayan (the official publication of the CPP), it has recorded no fewer than 3,321 cases of human rights violations under the Marcos regime. More than 680,000 individuals have been victimized, of which 256 were killed. AB also recorded AFP forces having arrested then willfully killed at least 78 members of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines from July 2022 to July 2025. These acts constitute blatant violations of IHL and the rules of war.
These violations stand in sharp contrast to the Philippines’ legal and treaty commitments. The Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions and has enacted RA 9851 or the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity as far back as 2009. It also signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and IHL(CARHRIHL), along with other documents, with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) during the peace talks which have since been unilaterally discontinued by the GPH, despite strong calls for its resumption.
Manindigan’s formation coincides with congressional deliberations over(Manindigan Network was formed as the GRP Congress was deliberating on the) billions of pesos in confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) for the 2026 budget of the Office of the President, and allocations for the notorious and corrupt National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
Manindigan Network stressed that every peso funneled into CIF and NTF-ELCAC is a peso stolen from public funds for health, education, housing and disaster response, as it also firmly denounced the misuse of public funds to bankroll military operations that have resulted in aerial bombardments, forced evacuations, red-tagging, fake surrenders, and harassment of civilians and activists.
Earlier, human rights groups strongly denounced the US-Marcos regime’s hosting of the Asia Pacific Regional Conference on International Humanitarian Law (IHL) at the New World Hotel in Makati City last August 11 as “another act of hypocrisy and window-dressing before the international community, amid numerous human rights and IHL violations under the current administration.”
Human rights group Karapatan stressed that the Marcos regime’s refusal to reaffirm commitment to and respect of the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), which the Philippine government signed in 1998 with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, as well as its continued counterinsurgency program through the National Action Plan on Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD) implemented by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) are grave indicators of its legacy of non-adherence to and contempt for IHL principles.
The NAP-UPD, Karapatan emphasized, blatantly flouts the principle of distinction under IHL by categorizing human rights defenders’ groups, people’s organizations and grassroots-oriented development groups as “communist terrorist group front organizations” (CTGFO) marking them as “legitimate” targets of violent attack by state forces. The NAP-UPD is designed to crackdown on legal democratic organizations to silence dissent.