Release Chantal Anicoche! Defend Mindoro!

BAYAN USA & Migrante USA urgently call for the immediate release of Chantal Anicoche, who is currently under the custody of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). Since learning that Chantal had been missing following the AFP's aerial bombing and strafing of communities in Abra de Ilog on January 1, her loved ones and countless community organizations have been unrelenting in our drive to ensure her safety and wellbeing.

We are immensely grateful for the non-stop work and advocacy of everyone who banded together across the U.S., the Philippines, and the world to demand her surfacing following the AFP's brutal attacks launched on the community she was with. Our efforts together have generated enough pressure to break through the information blackout that the Philippine government has enforced throughout Mindoro. Seeing Chantal alive gives us reassurance that she has remained steadfast and strong. Chantal has touched so many people in the U.S. in her desire to help those most in need. We in turn must campaign even harder so that she can be returned to her family and the community that loves her.

Chantal, we are with you. We are inspired by your strength and we are committed to fighting without end until we can assure your safety ourselves, as well as the welfare and safety of the communities you sought to learn from and serve.

We must not let our guard down. As long as Chantal is under the custody of the AFP, she remains in imminent danger. We must act to ensure her release so she is not subjected to the torture or harm that Philippine military forces have historically inflicted upon others they've kept behind closed doors. We must call for her immediate release as there is no reason for the AFP to keep in her in their custody, where its forces can commit acts to Chantal unbeknown to us.

The Philippine government will take every opportunity to manipulate the public narrative so it can continue to act with impunity and undermine our efforts and concern. The AFP claims that its soldiers were the ones to have found Chantal, but the truth is that its battalions were the ones who blocked fact finding missions and prevented us from immediately knowing Chantal's status. While the AFP released footage of Chantal to the media, it has not disclosed any further knowledge of where they are taking her, nor her current wellbeing to the public.

Let us remember why the Mangyan community in Abra de Ilog whom Chantal was with has been militarized in the first place. As a resource-rich island, Mindoro remains to be highly sought after by exploitative mining, energy, and ecotourism projects that displace people from their ancestral land and destroy the environment. The publicity stunts of the AFP and Philippine government only veil the true injustice: that Mindoro is under attack for the benefit of multinational corporations and local ruling classes in the Philippines who steal the people's land for their own profit, and that the AFP will do the dirty work of harming ordinary people who seek to protect their land and their future.

We call on Filipinos in the U.S. and our friends in solidarity to continue the fight to safely and immediately release Chantal and demand justice for those also impacted by the bombings—Jerlyn Doydora and the indigenous Mangyan community in Mindoro Occidental—especially as the AFP continues to deny the killings of Mangyan children.

Stop the bombings, defend Mindoro, #PalayainSiChantal!

Release Chantal Anicoche!
Justice for Jerlyn Doydora!
Stop the bombings! Stop the killings! Stop the attacks!
End U.S.-backed violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Philippines!
End de facto martial law in Mindoro!