KARAPATAN denounces
freezing of Leyte NGO’s bank accounts
Press Release
May 7, 2024
QUEZON CITY – Human rights
alliance KARAPATAN decried the recent freezing of the bank accounts
of a multi-awarded development non-government organization based in
Leyte province.
In an order dated May 2,
2024, the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) ordered the Tacloban
branches of PSBank and Metropolitan Bank to freeze the accounts of
the Leyte Center for Development Inc. (LCDe), as well as the
personal bank accounts of its executive director and members of its
staff.
LCDe is a 36-year old
development NGO based in Palo, Leyte that has won numerous awards
for assisting poor and marginalized communities in Eastern Visayas,
especially in disaster preparedness and response. Its funds are
sourced from private donors and at least seven countries, and it has
partnered with 23 local government units in Samar and Leyte.
According to the AMLC, its
freeze order stems from alleged findings that LCDe executive
director Jazmin Jerusalem and her staff had been providing funds to
the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People's
Army (NPA). The AMLC also claimed that Jerusalem and the LCDe staff
had earlier been designated as a "terrorist group/individual,”
though no public information is available attesting to this
designation.
"This is yet another
example of the arbitrariness and anti-poor character of the
Anti-Terrorism Council's (ATC) designation of persons or groups as
'terrorist' or 'terrorist financiers','' said Karapatan secretary
general Cristina Palabay. "This time, the ATC is focusing on LCDe
which has long been providing much- needed assistance to the most
impoverished rural communities of Samar and Leyte and had many times
been acclaimed for it's work, even by the Department of National
Defense," added Palabay.
“By freezing its accounts,
the ATC has effectively sabotaged the LCDe 's projects in these
communities and deprived them of the services that the LCDe has been
providing,” she said.
"As in other cases of this
nature," said Palabay, "the AMLC based its unjust designation and
freeze orders on the perjured testimonies of a so-called rebel
returnee who claimed to have founded the LCDe in 2002, when the LCDe
has, in fact, been registered with the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC) since 1988."
"This case also amply
demonstrates the real dangers of red-tagging and how it swiftly
leads to terror-tagging," said Palabay.
"Jerusalem has long been
the subject of red-tagging and harassment by state forces in the
course of her activism and development work. She was falsely accused
of involvement in a 'communist' purge in Leyte in the 1980s even if
she was still a college student in Cebu at the time of the alleged
incident. In 2018, she was among some 600 respondents in the
government's proscription case against the CPP-NPA, which was
eventually dismissed by a Manila court. Now, she is accused of being
a terrorist. Where will this end? In her unjust arrest and
detention, forcible disappearance or extrajudicial killing?” she
stated.
"Karapatan demands an end
to terror-tagging. Government bodies like the National Task Force to
End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), ATC and AMLC whose
reason for being is to surveil, profile, red- and terror-tag human
rights defenders, development workers and political activists must
be abolished, and the fascist and anti-people policies that
engendered them, revoked," concluded Palabay.