Throughout 2025, CHRP pushed forward its solidarity work in the UK, strengthening its trade union solidarity work, lobbying the UK government and parliament, and fundraising for justice campaigns.
Union links and solidarity
Just as the year was ending, Mike Cabangon, a National Council member of the KMU labour group and a regional organiser for the jeepney drivers union, PISTON in Northern Luzon, was arrested in Baguio City under the government’s sweeping Anti-Terrorism Law charged with “financing terrorism”. CHRP is raising his case with trade unions in the UK and the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF).
Charges like those made against Mike Cabangon, usually based on planted evidence or the testimonies of “anonymous informers”, are regularly used in the Philippines to neutralise the activities of NGOs, community organisations, and trade unions. During 2025, CHRP continued to campaign against similar trumped-up charges made against CHRP’s own chairperson, Fr. Herbert Fadirquela, and 27 other members of the development NGO CERNET in the province of Cebu. The case is also being monitored by UN Special Rapporteur, Mary Lawlor, who has called for an end to government harassment of CERNET. CHRP aims to step up its campaign in support of CERNET in 2026.
CHRP continued its work building solidarity between the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) in the Philippines and the National Education Union (NEU), and the University Colleges Union (UCU) in the UK. CHRP had a presence at the UCU national conference in Liverpool in May 2025, with Carl Marc Ramota from ACT being invited to speak at a UCU conference on academic freedom held in London in June. CHRP also had a presence at the NEU international Solidarity Conference in 2025 held in London in October, meeting with its international officers and focusing on the case of former ACT leader France Castro, former Congressman Satur Ocampo, and 11 teachers who had rescued pupils at a remote indigenous Lumad school from the threats of a right-wing paramilitary group working with the Philippines army. In a gross parody of justice, the teachers were convicted of child abduction by a local court. In December 2025, their appeal against these convictions – which would have required the government to admit its terror campaigns against Lumad schools – was denied. Castro and Ocampo have been two of the loudest and most persistent critics of government corruption. The campaign for justice for the Talaingod 13 continues.
Media freedom
In coordination with the Philippines National Union of Journalists (NUJP), CHRP continued its UK campaign to pressure for the release of journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio, jailed on trumped-up charges for her investigative journalism against corruption in the Eastern Visayas Region. Her case is central to the issue of press freedom in the Philippines. CHRP held meetings with the UK Foreign Office (FCDO) officials, and UK embassy representatives attended the court hearings dealing with her case, and encouraged other embassies to do the same. The Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts tabled an Early Day Motion in the UK Parliament calling for Frenchie Mae’s release and wrote to the Philippines Government. The UK National Union of Journalists raised her case with its network of MPs and in its union journal, putting into practice the solidarity links forged during the visit to the NUJ head office in London by the NUJP Secretary General Len Olea, in 2024, organised by CHRP. The most serious charge of murder manufactured against Frenchie Mae was dismissed in November, but she remains in detention facing other charges under the Anti Terrorism Law.
CHRP continues to work with the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Rights and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to protest against the conviction of France Castro and Satur Ocampo and to support defenders of true democracy in the Philippines.
To mark International Women’s Day in 2025, CHRP held an information stand inside the Houses of Parliament, providing briefings for UK parliamentarians on the cases of Frenchie Mae Cumpio and France Castro.
CHRP continued to press the TUC for a higher priority to be given by British trade unions to the issue of trade union repression in the Philippines. Several national unions now support the KMU campaign to free imprisoned trade unionists in the Philippines. The TUC has actively supported KMU at the ILO in Geneva to pressure the Philippine government to meet the recommendations made by the ILO High Level Mission to the Philippines in 2023.
The KMU scored a major victory against company attempts to crush its workers’ union at the huge Nexperia silicon chip factory outside Manila. CHRP raised funds to support the KMU campaign and is currently in contact with the Nexperia unions at the UK’s major Nexperia plant with the aim of developing future plant-to-plant workers’ solidarity.
Enforced disappearances
State abductions, enforced disappearances and murders continue to be the most serious human rights violations in the Philippines. Following the forced disappearances of labour and environmental campaigners James Jasmines and Felix Salaveria Jr in 2024, CHRP raised funds to help the families maintain their campaign to pressure the military to release information about the fates of the two men. CHRP raised these cases with the UK embassy in Manila which sent observers to the press conferences organised by the families of James and Felix, CHRP also donated funds to the Desperadidos organisation of the mothers of the disappeared, to support showings of the award-winning film Alipato at Moog made by the brother of disappeared student activist Jonas Burgos.
Support for social justice
During 2025, CHRP became a referral agency for Prisoners of Conscience and obtained grants to give support to families of peasants, workers and community organisers who have been arrested on trumped-up anti-terrorism charges. We were able to provide some support to three different families in 2025 in coordination with organisations in the Philippines such as Karapatan, CERNET and the NUJP. We hope to provide more support in 2026.
CHRP once more joined the Dara Bascara Trust, in providing funds to support the campaign of the Talaingod 13 and to the Save Our Schools campaign for the education rights of indigenous Lumad children. This campaign was particularly close to the heart of former CHRP secretary Dara Bascara before her death.
CHRP donated funds to a breast cancer screening programme for women factory workers being run by the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER).
CHRP joined in community fundraising in the UK along with the UK community organisations like the United Domestic Workers Alliance (UDWA), Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association, Dara Bascara Trust and Philippines Theatre UK to raise £1360 for victims of a succession of super-typhoons. The revelation that vital funds to construct anti-flood defences around the country had gone into the pockets of government officials and businesses has led to the emergence of a powerful broad-based movement against Government corruption, which is likely to grow stronger in 2026.
Website
During 2025, CHRP revamped its website to be a more effective tool in providing information about CHRP and the human rights situation in the Philippines and to assist our campaign work in 2026.
CHRP is an affiliate of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP).