Environmental advocates score ‘surveillance’ of leader

From the Business Mirror (Oct 13): Environmental advocates score ‘surveillance’ of leader

KALIKASAN-People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE) on Tuesday expressed alarm over the alleged surveillance being conducted by unidentified men on the group’s leader, Clemente Bautista.

In a statement, Kalikasan-PNE said that Bautista, the group’s national coordinator, noticed that he was.“being tailed” by the unidentified men on Monday.

Bautista said he noticed “two suspicious [looking] individuals” alternately roaming outside the office of the Advocates of Science & Technology for the People on Scout Fuentebella, Quezon City, where he was in a meeting with Agham’s volunteer scientists.

At around 6:45 p.m. on the same day, men onboard a car and a motorcycle allegedly started to tail Bautista anew as he left the Kalikasan-PNE’s office on Matulungin Street, also in Quezon City.

Around 7:30 p.m., in the area of Ayala Avenue, Makati City, Bautista decided to park hoping to shake off who he suspected to be military intelligence agents.

But the men, who repeatedly refused to identify themselves, waited patiently at the parking exit until10:30 p.m., even after the parking security guard confronted them.

Bautista was able to take pictures of the men and was able to note the car and motorcycles’ license plates WTO-294, ZK 2550 and NE 24909, respectively.

In a statement, Kalikasan-PNE said “no other entity with motive to harass a known leader-activist but the intelligence assets of the Armed Forces” which, they say, is notorious for harassing and repressing activists like Bautista.

Bautista and members of Kalikasan-PNE recently led massive protest actions in support of antimining and anticoal communities in Batangas, Mindoro, and other parts of Southern Tagalog.

They have also been in high-profile actions and have conducted various forms of support for the #StopLumadKillings campaign against the militarization and plunder of the ancestral lands of the lumad in Mindanao and Igorots in Nueva Vizcaya.

“We all know about the continuing war of plunder by the military in Mindanao. Less known is the fact that our colleagues from Bukal, our provincial counterpart in Batangas, have also recently experienced heightened militarization and harassment. Some 200 Army soldiers have been reported to have been deployed in areas with land struggles across Batangas, while elements of the Air Force were reportedly going on a house-to-house campaign around Lobo, a biodiversity-rich town threatened by the large-scale mining project of Australian-Canadian firm Egerton Gold Philippines, to vilify Bukal,” said the group in a statement.

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/environmental-advocates-score-surveillance-of-leader/