Political prisoners go on hunger strike during President Marcos’ 2024 SONA

While President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. delivered his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Monday, July 22, over 100 political prisoners in the newly created Negros Island Region went on a hunger strike to protest their human rights concerns.

Inmates from the Negros Occidental District Jail in Bago City and Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) facilities in Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental refused to eat that day to express their discontent with the government’s handling of human rights issues.

Among their demands include:

• the immediate release of elderly political prisoners on humanitarian grounds;
• an end to the threats of arrest and other persecutory measures by the Marcos administration against the Paghida-et sa Kauswagan Development Group (PDG) and other peasant-oriented non-government organizations in Negros and elsewhere in the country
• and the resumption of formal peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).

According to Karapatan, a left-wing non-government organization (NGO) and human rights alliance, there are 90 ailing inmates and 102 elderly political prisoners among the 755 political prisoners nationwide.

Urgent release is sought for individuals like Ernesto Jude Rimando Jr., a Cebu-based labor rights advocate with stage 4 liver cancer, and elderly sick detainees such as 79-year-old Rosita Taboy, 72-year-old Evangeline Rapanut, and septuagenarian couples Frank Fernandez and Cleofe Lagtapon, Ruben and Presentacion Saluta, and Alberto and Virginia Villamor.

The Negros political prisoners also called on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to cease prosecuting members of the Negros Occidental-based PDG and the Cebu-based Community Empowerment Resource Network (CERNet).

These NGOs were reportedly red-tagged and accused of financing terrorist organizations while conducting socio-economic projects for farmers and indigenous peoples in areas in Negros designated as “geographically isolated” by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).