Activist Solon Slams Crackdown vs Southern Tagalog Militants

Anakpawis party-list Rep. Rafael Mariano today assailed what he described as a looming crackdown by the fascist Arroyo regime against mass leaders of the progressive people’s movement in Southern Tagalog region.

Mariano issued the statement after the police last night arrested Anakpawis party-list provincial coordinator Rogelio “Ka Mamay” Galit.

Galit, 49, is also the spokesperson of the Kalipunan ng mga Magsasaka sa Kabite, the provincial chapter of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas which Mariano chairs

Albeit Galit’s severe health condition due to diabetes, he was dragged and compulsorily taken to Camp Vicente Lim for investigation in a trumped-up multiple murder case filed against him together with more than 70 leaders and activists in Southern Tagalog.

Galit, in spite of his diabetic condition has long been serving the peasantry in Cavite in campaigning against the rampant land-use conversion of agricultural lands, advancing a genuine agrarian reform and reviving the coffee industry, to name a few of his advocacies.

He was one of the complainants in the controversial Arroyo-Bolante fertilizer scam and issued an affidavit to the Senate investigating committee in 2005 that the farmers in Cavite did not receive a single centavo from the fertilizer fund.

“Galit is the fourth leader of the progressive movement in Southern Tagalog victimized by Ms Arroyo’s looming crackdown,” says Mariano.

State security forces last month arrested Atty. Remigio Saladero (one of the legal counsels of Anakpawis party-list), Nestor San Jose (Anakpawis-Rizal coordinator), and Crispin Zapanta (Bayan Muna) last October 23, 24 and 27, respectively.

The militant lawmaker said that “like what it did against national leaders of the progressive movement continues, like the Batasan Six and KMP deputy secretary general Randall Echanis, the Arroyo administration and the military continues to undermine and make a mockery of the legal and judicial system to persecute leaders of the progressive movement in the regions.”

“Malacanang and its dreaded Inter-Agency Legal Action Group headed by Norberto Gonzalez has expanded its ‘legal’ offensive in the region side-by-side with its notorious policy of extra-judicial killings which failed in its objective to silence the growing people’s resistance against the corrupt and fascist Arroyo regime,” Mariano said.

Mariano said the so-called “legal” offensive forms part of internal security plan Bantay Laya 2 which aims to crush the legal progressive movement in the country. #

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