CABUYAO CITY, Philippines — Filipino-American organizer Christina Pasion and Indigenous Mangyan-Buhid organizer Binay Serrano remain in illegal and politically motivated custody by Philippine Old State authorities, nearly a month after their arrest.
Pasion, 27, and Serrano were seized July 30 in Barangay San Isidro, Cabuyao City, Laguna, by the Philippine Army’s 68th Infantry Battalion, the Philippine National Police, and immigration officials while receiving medical treatment, according to the human rights group Karapatan Southern Tagalog. Serrano’s whereabouts were concealed for three days before a Karapatan humanitarian team located her at a district jail in Occidental Mindoro. Pasion remains held by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration.
Philippine military officials call Serrano, alias “Samay,” a medical and logistics officer of the New People’s Army facing an alleged pre-existing murder warrant, and describe Pasion as her “companion,” citing an alleged notebook and prior sightings near armed encounters in Mindoro.
Pasion’s family, Migrante International, and the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) reject these allegations as baseless, calling it the culmination of a months-long red-tagging campaign waged against Pasion by the Philippine Army.
Pasion, born in Maryland to Filipino migrant healthcare workers, was politicized by the 2014 police killing of Eric Garner before turning to full-time organizing. In Baltimore, she participated in the defense of Filipino seafarers detained and deported from the Port of Baltimore under the Trump regime’s Customs and Border Protection crackdown. She traveled to the Philippines in December on a Migrante-coordinated exposure trip to work directly alongside rural Indigenous communities and study the roots of forced Filipino migration. She is also a visual artist whose work reflects “the lives and conditions of ordinary Filipinos and Filipino-Americans.”
Serrano organizes with Bigkis at Lakas ng mga Katutubo sa Timog Katagalugan (BALATIK), defending Mangyan-Buhid ancestral land against encroachment, a struggle which has made Indigenous organizers in Mindoro and Southern Tagalog a standing target of Armed Forces of the Philippine Old State.
The arrests came one day after a clash between the Army’s 76th Infantry Battalion and alleged New People’s Army fighters in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro, that killed three alleged NPA fighters and triggered the deployment of four military tanks, forced evacuations, and suspended classes, part an intensifying pattern of militarization across the region.
In Baltimore, the solidarity campaign has held an emergency town hall, an August 6 rally at McKeldin Plaza, a solidarity supper, and ongoing political education sessions. As of August 19, organizers marked 21 days of detention with no confirmed timeline for release. “There has been little to no movement,” organizers said, “toward updates on Christina’s and Binay’s release from their illegal detainment thus far.”
PEOPLE’S DEFENSE COMMITTEE CALLS FOR THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF CHRISTINA AND BINAY!!
