Roy Barbosa
Roy Barbosa is a human rights defender and a news editor at Manila Today, an alternative media outlet that focuses on reporting the issues of marginalised sectors in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. Their career in journalism began as a campus journalist, and in 2020, they became the Regional Coordinator of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) for NCR. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Roy Barbosa played a key role in rebuilding and strengthening campus publications. They have been contributing to Manila Today since 2019 and went full-time in 2020, using their platform to report on youth, women, workers, and other underrepresented groups. Their commitment to journalism has taken them to remote and far-flung communities, where they have amplified the stories and struggles of marginalised sectors.
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. Since martial law was declared in Mindanao in May 2017, and given the fear that it will be extended to the whole country, human rights defenders are increasingly targeted by threats, acts intimidation and harassment by the military.
