Political prisoner Rey Irvine Malaborbor, peasant and indigenous people organizer in Southern Tagalog, walked free last week. He was supposed to be released on June 23, but personnel from Metro Manila District Jail Annex 4 (MMDJ4) blocked his release.

The 76th IB arrested Malaborbor on July 27, 2019, in Santa Cruz, Occidental Mindoro. The military accused him of being a New People’s Army member. He faced multiple criminal charges in Mindoro, Quezon, and Taguig City.

Malaborbor is the son of Laguna labor leader Reynaldo “Rey” Malaborbor. His father founded the Alyansa ng Manggagawa sa Probinsya ng Laguna and also became a veteran organizer among farmers under the Pagkakaisa’t Ugnayan ng mga Magbubukid sa Laguna.

In 2010, his father was one of three activists arrested by the US-Aquino II regime in Lumban, Laguna and was imprisoned for five years. The US-Duterte regime killed him in November 2019 while he was on his way home.

According to Karapatan-Laguna, Rey Irvine was arrested under Duterte’s widespread campaign to suppress and criminalize activism and the struggle for rights.

The group said the state robbed six years of Malaborbor’s life for his commitment to help Mindoro farmers who experience land use conversion, militarization, and environmental destruction from mining and other projects.

“Finally, justice and truth prevailed and all the cases against him were successfully dismissed,” Karapatan-Laguna stated. However, the group firmly asserts that Malaborbor should never have been imprisoned from the beginning.

“His arrest had no basis. His release only showed the state’s rotten and worthless tactics against activists. Even under the US-Marcos Jr regime, we have seen its rotten and baseless fascist repression,” the group stated.

Following Malaborbor’s release, Karapatan-Laguna called anew for the release of all political prisoners nationwide, which number at least 745, with more than 90 in Southern Tagalog.