Indigenous leaders face criminal charges for setting up anti-mining barricades in the Philippines

More than 30 cases — cyberlibel, trespassing, grave coercion, disobedience — have been filed against Indigenous leaders, environmentalists, and lawyers in Nueva Vizcaya, a mountainous Philippine province where mining exploration has displaced rural and Indigenous communities.

Residents built barricades to block operations by companies including Woggle Corporation, whose permit was suspended after public pressure, and North Luzon Minerals Resources Corporation, granted rights to explore over 4,000 hectares. Organizers say they were never properly consulted, and describe rivers reduced to channels and delayed rains near drilling sites.

Local and national civil society groups have labeled the prosecutions Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, meant to exhaust and intimidate defenders rather than win on the merits. Police have been deployed at the barricades, which residents and activists describe as militarization of a land dispute, not a crime scene.

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