The Commission on Human Rights has stepped into the case of an environmental activist who was recently arrested in Laguna “for no apparent reason.”
CHR executive director Jacqueline Ann de Guia said their office in Region IV-A was already conducting a voluntary investigation into the apprehension of Daisy Macapanpan in Pakil, Laguna last June 11.
Macapanpan was reportedly arrested after she delivered a speech denouncing the construction of the Ahunan pumped-storage hydropower project on top of Mt. Inumpong of the Sierra Madre mountain range, which was believed to adversely affect the environment, wild life, and religious practices of the people in the area.
“CHR will be looking into these allegations of several human rights violations — noting allegations of police brutality crackdown on dissent, as well as red-tagging said to have links to the environmental cause of Macapanpan,” De Guia said.
She said CHR Region IV-A had already talked to Macapanpan, who was being detained in Pagbilao, Quezon.
The CHR would also talk to other parties as part of its independent investigation, she added.
The arrest was reportedly carried out by a 25-member Philippine National Police-Special Action Force team using an alias to identify Macapanpan and by virtue of a warrant for an alleged rebellion case in 2008. Rio N. Araja
The police also asserted that Macapanpan was a high-ranking member of the communist movement’s New People’s Army.