MANILA, Philippines — Activists, including indigenous people, broke through police lines on Padre Faura St. in Manila and picketed the Department of Justice to protest killings and other human rights abuses and the filing of what they maintain are trumped-up charges against them and their supporters.
The scuffle broke out in front of the Supreme Court where law enforcers had set up a barricade.
However, the outnumbered police were unable to hold back the protesters, most of them from the IP coalition Sandugo.
No one was reported injured but Padre Faura was closed to traffic because of the protest, which was part of the build-up to what is expected to be massive protests on Thursday, September 21, the 45th anniversary of the declaration by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos over the country.
The protests, this time, will also be against what leftists call the “fascist regime” of President Rodrigo Duterte and the many human rights abuses they say have marked his war on drugs, the counterinsurgency program and martial law in Mindanao.