Renalyn Tejero
Renalyn Tejero is a woman human rights defender and works as a paralegal for Karapatan, an alliance of individuals, groups and organisations, formed in 1995 for the promotion and protection of human rights in the Philippines. The alliance is committed to the defence of human rights and civil liberties through education, training, advocacy, research and network building.
The climate of impunity in the Philippines, coupled with the administration's encouragement of extrajudicial killings of suspected drug users, as well as the increasingly hard line of the military against the Philippine National Democratic Front , have led to a serious deterioration of the situation of human rights defenders in the country. Since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in May 2016, HRDs have faced a wave of assassinations and violence. Judicial harassment and the criminalization of HRDs remain common; politicians and private actors, such as mining companies, use the justice system to silence those who oppose their interests. HRDs are accused of violent crimes or of belonging to the New People's Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party. HRDs have also reported cases of close surveillance by the police.
