Justice for Jemboy and Rowe! Hold the PNP and AFP accountable!
Malaya Movement USA statement on the murder of Jemboy Baltazar and Rowe Jhon Libot
Malaya Movement USA is raising alarm around the murders of 17-year-old Jemboy Baltazar by members of the Philippine National Police and indigenous teacher Rowe Jhon Libot by members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
By the PNP’s own admission, they wrongfully identified Baltazar as a wanted suspect whom the shot multiple times as he was cleaning a boat on August 2, leaving his body for several hours in the water. Baltazar’s mother, Rhoda, an overseas Filipino worker, had to attend her boy’s funeral through FaceTime.
The horrendous crime by the PNP however, cannot be excused as a mere mistake as the PNP is widely known for its unofficial shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy, along with other unfathomable crimes like the rape and murder of 15-year-old Fabel Pineda or extortion of impoverished citizens they illegally detained in a secret jail as in the case of the Raxabago Police precinct discovered in 2017.
As the PNP continues to wreak havoc in urban city centers, as became the norm under Duterte’s deadly war on drugs, the AFP have been accused again of targeting indigenous and far flung communities in Mindanao.
Libot, whose murder is being grieved by his young students and their respective families, is the latest indigenous Lumad victim by the AFP. Unsurprisingly, the AFP pulled out its usual tactic of manufactured lies to justify its terror campaign against indigenous Lumad residing on mineral-rich and profitable ancestral lands by claiming that Libot has a long-standing criminal record. This is the usual fascistic tactic the AFP uses, as in the case of two schoolteachers of Lumad children, Chad Booc and Jurain Ngujo.
The AFP and PNP are monstrous symptoms of a sham democracy now headed by the criminal Marcos Jr. regime. Murder is the usual conduct of the AFP and PNP, recorded uncountable times by media, human rights watchdogs, and the communities of urban poor, peasant poor, and indigenous Lumad.
Malaya Movement USA firmly supports accountability and consequences for all AFP and PNP members involved in the heinous murder of Baltazar and Libot. We repeat our call to the United States Congress and Biden-Harris administration to suspend security aid to the Philippines through the Philippine Human Rights Act and all other legislative and executive means. Pass the PHRA!
