Filipinos in the United States Stand with Alicia Lucena! Activism Is Not A Crime!

Anakbayan-USA stands with Alicia Lucena and offers our utmost commitment to her and fellow organizers in the Philippines: we are with you. After being held captive against her will by state agents for months, on August 16, Alicia finally spoke out through her personal Facebook account about the abuse and torment she faced. The culprits are none other than the personnel and agents of the Duterte regime’s National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and Philippine National Police (PNP), including Alicia’s own parents.

Alicia Lucena is a member of Anakbayan who was forced into the spotlight in 2019 during the government’s attempts to criminalize progressive youth organizations as “kidnappers” and “brainwashers” of youth. Some of the masterminds behind this effort include Bato dela Rosa, one of the chief architects of Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs,” and Lorraine Badoy, a spokesperson for the NTF-ELCAC. In 2020, the Supreme Court junked petitions against Anakbayan and other organizations, and the month following, the Department of Justice junked all the charges brought against them. The Department of Justice even denied the police’s plea to revive the charges the following year, showing just how baseless the NTF-ELCAC’s accusations are and affirming the right of all youth, like Alicia, to speak up for the rights and welfare of the Filipino people. 

However, in true counterinsurgency fashion, the Duterte regime did not limit itself to using trumped up charges through the legal system to silence youth activism. The NTF-ELCAC took advantage of Alicia’s relationship with her family to turn her mother into an agent of the NTF-ELCAC, who eventually helped to found the group “Hands Off Our Children” to extend the regime’s psy-war tactics into activists’ homes and family affairs. The regime went so far as to weaponize COVID-19 swab tests to abduct Alicia in April, leading to her months’ long captivity and abuse. 

We echo Anakbayan Philippines’ press release that Alicia’s escape was necessary and legitimate given the abuse she had experienced in detention. As activists of Anakbayan in the United States, we also see the NTF-ELCAC’s attempts to malign our organizing through counter protests and community flyering efforts that terror-tag and criminalize our organization. However, the crimes they falsely accuse mass organizations like Anakbayan are ones that the NTF-ELCAC have actually committed against Alicia and unfortunately many others: kidnapping, imprisonment, torture, and psychological abuse. The only “crime” Anakbayan has committed is in speaking true to the conditions and calls of the Filipino masses and exposing the US-Duterte regime for pumping all its money into the NTF-ELCAC, which does nothing to resolve the worsening health and economic crisis in the Philippines.

We rise alongside with Alicia, Anakbayan Philippines, and all youth demanding for a better future that the current system cannot provide. The voice of the youth cannot be silenced, as long as we are linked arm-in-arm with the Filipino people! 

JUSTICE FOR ALICIA LUCENA!

ABOLISH THE NTF-ELCAC! 

ACTIVISM IS NOT A CRIME!

#StandWithAlicia

#ActivismIsNotACrime

#AnakbayanAko

#AbolishNTFELCAC

#OustDuterteNOW