Cumpio and the wider war on dissent

The arrest and prolonged detention of journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio, who spent her birthday on Feb. 7 in a Tacloban jail, sparked outrage among press freedom advocates worldwide. Rightly so. Convicted recently of alleged terrorism financing, Cumpio became a symbol of the Philippine government’s assault on press freedom. A community journalist in the insurgency-wracked Eastern Visayas, Cumpio’s work earned her the ire of the military.

While advocates may not have intended to limit their focus to press freedom, that has largely been the effect. The emphasis on Cumpio as a media worker may have inadvertently obscured a more troubling reality: hundreds of activists, human rights defenders, and development workers across the Philippines have been ensnared in a systematic campaign of repression.

This is not to diminish Cumpio’s suffering or that of her colleagues; the targeting of journalists deserve sustained attention. But when we frame these incidents almost exclusively through the lens of press freedom, we risk missing the forest for the trees. The same apparatus of repression bearing down on journalists is also crushing the broader civil society, often with deadlier consequences and far less international attention.

Consider that, in the Philippines, dozens of activists and community organizers have been killed under suspicious circumstances as the government wages its counterinsurgency campaign. Many more have been arrested on what critics describe as trumped-up charges, following a familiar pattern: raids that “discover” firearms or explosives, accusations of communist ties, and prolonged detention that stretches on for years.

Consider Amanda Echanis, a community health worker and activist arrested in 2020 alongside her infant child. Like Cumpio, she faced charges of illegal weapons possession after a police raid. Her son was separated from her during detention. A court finally acquitted Echanis in January, after she had spent five years behind bars.

Zara Alvarez, a paralegal and human rights worker in Negros Occidental, documented extrajudicial killings and land rights violations. Despite being repeatedly Red-tagged, she continued her work until she was shot dead in August 2020.

The “Tumandok 9” killings of December 2020 offer another stark example. In dawn raids across Panay, military and police forces killed nine indigenous leaders from the Tumandok tribe who opposed a dam project they said threatened their ancestral lands.

Development workers face particular risk. Members of church-based and humanitarian organizations have been systematically Red-tagged, their offices raided and staff arrested. Over the years, the military publicly identified dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of organizations and individuals as communist fronts or sympathizers, including international aid groups such as Oxfam. Many of those listed subsequently faced surveillance, harassment, and intimidation.

What connects these cases is the government’s expansive definition of “enemies of the state” as deemed by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. This apparatus treats human rights work, environmental advocacy, community organizing, and community journalism as potential fronts for insurgency. The logic is totalizing: criticize government policy and you are labeled a communist sympathizer; defend land rights or document abuses and you are marked as a rebel supporter.

The consequences extend beyond individual victims. Communities learn that advocating for their rights invites retaliation. Civil society organizations close offices or cease operations in hostile regions. Potential activists choose silence over risk. This chilling effect may be the program’s true purpose: to make dissent itself too dangerous to express.

International attention gravitates toward cases like Cumpio’s partly because journalists have platforms to amplify their own plight and partly because press freedom violations are easily understood within democratic frameworks. As a Red-tagged journalist myself when I was secretary general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (and later when I was the researcher in the Philippines for Human Rights Watch), I understand the press freedom narrative. But many other victims lack similar visibility. They face the same state machinery, often with more extreme violence and far less scrutiny.

Recognizing this broader pattern does not detract from defending press freedom. It strengthens that defense by revealing its true context. Cumpio’s case is not an aberration or merely an antimedia campaign. It is a manifestation of systematic repression targeting anyone who challenges power and exposes abusive practices.

Only by seeing the full scope of this crisis can we understand what is truly at stake in the Philippines. Press freedom, human rights, environmental protection, and social justice are under simultaneous assault by the same counterinsurgency doctrine. Journalists like Cumpio are the tip of the iceberg. Countless others face the same repression in far deeper obscurity.

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Carlos H. Conde is a freelance human rights journalist in the Philippines.