On Friday, December 6th, 2024, workers’ organization Worker Solidarity Network, SFU student organization SFPIRG, and Filipino youth organization Anakbayan joined Canada-Philippines Solidarity for Human Rights (CPSHR) to meet with the Philippine Consulate and present an open letter calling for Filipino union organizer Maoj Maga to be released from prison.
The petition has so far been signed by over 50 organizations and 150 individuals, and asserts that unionism is not a crime, and trade unionists like Maoj Maga are advocates who continue to raise workers’ legitimate demands despite an increasingly hostile environment in the Philippines.
Political prisoners’ living conditions
The people of the Philippines are experiencing particularly harsh realities as political prisoners. The Philippines ranks third in the world for jail and prison overcrowding, and has one of the highest number of political prisoners in the world, behind Palestine and Saudi Arabia, with almost 800 political prisoners. This political prisoner population is made up of labour organizers, peasant organizers, feminist organizers, religious leaders, Indigenous organizers, and even student organizers, some of whom are below the age of eighteen, who are critical of the Philippine government. They fight to address the needs of the people but their voices are suppressed. This is enshrined through policies like the Anti-Terror and Terrorism Financing Laws and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
The settler state of Canada plays a role in the conditions that worsen the lives of Filipinos and cause the growing number of political prisoners in the Philippines. From the corporate mining of Canadian companies like OceanaGold and B2Gold that especially causes the oppression of Indigenous people and peasants, to the implementation of the Indo-Pacific Strategy that will bring more Canadian military into the Philippines and across the Indo-Pacific region, the Canadian state continues to work with an administration known for its record of human rights violations, with 42,426 forced evacuations, 44,065 indiscriminate bombings, 105 extrajudicial killings, 145 illegal arrests and detentions recorded between 2022-2024.
The need for labour organizing in the Philippines
Labour organizers like Maoj Maga experience particularly intense repression in response to their resistance. Similar to workers in Canada, workers in the Philippines suffer from low wages, contractualization, unsafe working conditions, and lack of benefits — but to a much larger degree. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has named the Philippines one of the worst countries to be a worker, and Union Network International (UNI) has named the Philippines to be one of the most dangerous places to be a labour organizer.
Union organizer Maoj Maga is one of the over 50 labour organizers currently incarcerated in the Philippines. Maoj is a former Jeepney public transit driver and a full-time trade union organizer of Kilusang Mayo Uno (May 1st Labor Movement) and a founding member of the youth group Anakbayan.
At the time of his arrest, Maga was actively supporting the strikes of the PISTON Land Transport Coalition who opposed the Jeepney “modernization” plans of the Philippine government. These plans included purchasing e-Jeepneys that cost over 2 million pesos ($140,000 CAD) which workers cannot afford, and which do not deal with the root issues of the pollution in the Philippines, as Jeepneys only constitute 2% of the vehicles on the road.
Maoj Maga’s arrest and imprisonment
The police arrested Maoj based on fabricated charges for a murder in a location in Mindanao where he had never been. During his arrest, he was also falsely accused of carrying a firearm, which was later shown to be planted. He was convicted of illegal possession of a firearm and sentenced to 8-14 years, but the Court of Appeals eventually overturned the conviction, citing clear evidence of planted evidence and violations of his rights. Despite this, the government continued their persecution of Maoj, slapping him with seven more fabricated charges of murder and attempted murder—things he has been charged with while still imprisoned!
With no basis for these charges, it now seems the intent is to keep Maojo in jail for as long as possible, as each case hearing progresses at a frustratingly slow pace. This combination of fabricated evidence, false testimony, unfounded charges, and drawn out court proceedings is a common tactic used by the Philippine government to detain activists organizing for the revolutionary National Democratic movement in the Philippines.
Nevertheless, the people resist. Organizations like KARAPATAN and KAPATID fight for the release of all political prisoners in the Philippines, and the outpouring of support in so-called Canada for Maoj’s case shows the public knows fighting to resist the conditions activists in the Philippines face due to Canadian intervention is directly linked to struggles for economic and social justice at home. Organizations and unions such as the Vancouver & District Labour Council (VDLC) and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) already actively support the release Maoj Maga and are organizing to support political prisoners in the Philippines and around the world.
How to help release Maoj
The open letter will be delivered to the Canadian Embassy of the Philippines, the Department of Justice of the Philippines, and the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines, and the petition is still ongoing! Sign on to the open letter here, and invite all organizations, unions, and individuals to join the call to release Maoj Maga.
Trade unionism is not a crime!
Learn more about Maoj’s case and about political prisoners in the Philippines by listening to the Spring Radio Podcast episode with Dennise Velasco, former political prisoner, and Maoj’s best friend
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