Thank you for Helping Free Amanda Echanis! Free All Political Prisoners!
The Amihan National Federation of Peasant Women thanks everyone for their hard work and unwavering support in freeing peasant women organizer and writer Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis from detention after five years. On January 14, 2026, the Tuguegarao City Regional Trial Court acquitted Amanda from false charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives due to lack of evidence. Amanda is now happily and safely reunited with her son, five-year-old Randall Emmanuel; her mother, Linda Lacaba-Echanis; and her many friends and fellow activists.
Amanda, an organizer for Amihan-Cagayan, was arrested on December 2, 2020 in Cagayan Province while nursing her then-two-month-old baby. Amanda has always claimed that instead of armed weapons purportedly “planted” at the house she was staying in, “Baby ko lang po ang hawak ko” (It is only my baby who I am carrying). Amanda’s arrest followed the brutal murder of her father, peace consultant Randall “Ka Randy” Echanis, by state forces at his Metro Manila home on August 10, 2020. Ka Randy’s killers have yet to be apprehended.
Amanda’s detention at the Cagayan Provincial Jail was fraught with postponements in court hearings, changes in presiding judges, and other legal delays. Meanwhile, the Free Amanda Echanis Movement (FAEM) was consolidated to run the campaign to immediately free Amanda and all political prisoners. In 2024, Amanda was elected to the University Student Council of University of the Philippines-Diliman, where she was granted the opportunity to pursue a degree in Malikhaing Pagsulat (Creative Writing).
Amihan thanks the organizations and individuals who joined FAEM and launched various activities and projects—concerts, books, films, among others—to raise awareness and gather funds for Amanda’s legal expenses. We thank the writers, translators, publishers, artists, advocates, students, teachers, church people, Amanda’s fellow cultural workers and human rights defenders in the Philippines and abroad in Southeast Asia, UK, Europe, North America, and Australia for amplifying the campaign to free Amanda and all political prisoners.
Political prisoners demonstrate the people’s resistance against the state’s fascist attacks on activists, human rights defenders, and peasant women. Political prisoners from the peasant sector had been resisting land grabbing and displacement, militarization, and human rights violations. Activists and peasant communities face constant threats of harassment, red-tagging, forced surrender, illegal detention, and outright execution. Human Rights group Karapatan reports that as of November 2025, of the 696 political prisoners in the Philippines, 136 are women. Ninety-three are elderly and 89 are sickly. Having no access to medical care and services or to basic needs like decent food, water, and sleeping quarters, political prisoners develop illnesses or their diseases merely worsen. On May 4, 2020, 61-year-old peasant activist Adelaida Macusang died in prison in Davao del Oro due to kidney failure and cardiac arrest.
The people’s fight does not end here. Amanda’s acquittal proves that with militant vigilance and collective action, we can free all political prisoners and continue the Filipinos’ steadfast struggle for national liberation.
Free All Political Prisoners!
Justice for Ka Randy Echanis!