Molbog and Palaw’an communities
The indigenous Molbog and Palaw’an communities residing in Bugsuk and Mariahangin Islands in Southern Palawan, Philippines, are currently facing an intensified struggle for their ancestral lands and traditional livelihoods. These communities are engaged in the defence of collective rights, which are being disregarded by the large-scale luxury ecotourism project developed by Bricktree Properties, a subsidiary of the Philippine multinational conglomerate San Miguel Corporation (SMC).
The Molbog and Palaw’an communities’ defence of human rights is deeply rooted in historical land grants from the Martial Law era, which systematically dispossessed these communities of their ancestral lands. Since April 2024, SMC has intensified armed intimidation, legal harassment, and systemic repression to displace the Molbog and Palaw’an communities from their territories.
The climate of impunity in the Philippines, coupled with the administration's encouragement of extrajudicial killings of suspected drug users, as well as the increasingly hard line of the military against the Philippine National Democratic Front, have led to a serious deterioration of the situation of human rights defenders in the country. Since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in May 2016, HRDs have faced a wave of assassinations and violence. Judicial harassment and the criminalization of HRDs remain common; politicians and private actors, such as mining companies, use the justice system to silence those who oppose their interests. HRDs are accused of violent crimes or of belonging to the New People's Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party. HRDs have also reported cases of close surveillance by the police. Since martial law was declared in Mindanao in May 2017, and given the fear that it will be extended to the whole country, human rights defenders are increasingly targeted by threats, acts intimidation and harassment by the military.
