Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) and its regional formations in Southern Tagalog (PAMANTIK-KMU), KMU-Southern Mindanao and AMA SUGBO-KMU, condemned the continuing and new schemes of the Marcos regime to suppress the labor movement in the country.

In a press conference yesterday, May 25, workers exposed the regime’s anti-worker offensive in various parts of the country. One of the latest schemes is charging workers for “terrorist financing,” carried out in conjunction with the harassment of development workers.

Jaime Paglinawan, chairperson of AMA SUGBO-KMU, appeared at the press conferenc. He was charged with “terrorism financing” in a court in Cebu, along with 26 other former and current development workers from the institution CERNET.

“The impact of these attacks is not only on unionists and progressive groups,” said Jerome Adonis, KMU general secretary. “When the operations of pro-worker groups are derailed or stopped, the other rights of workers are also violated and not addressed.”

Workers belittled the Marcos regime’s hypocritical formation of an inter-agency task force to address violations of workers’ rights to unionize and form other types of associations.

Since the creation of the task force, attacks on workers have worsened. One of the worst cases was the soldiers’ abduction and disappearance of William Lariosa, veteran KMU-SMR organizer, last April.

“The Biden regime also has a global propaganda campaign in the United States that they are champions of labor rights, their plan is to have a pro-labor President of the US,” according to Adonis. “But the US, historically, with its colonization and the policies it dictates to countries, is the number one violator of workers’ rights.”

The NTF-Elcac, which plagues the workforce, is patterned after US counterinsurgency programs, he said.