The Center for Women’s Resources (CWR), a women’s research institution, condemned the issuance of arrest warrants against veteran child rights advocate and women labor organizer Jacqueline “Jacq” Ruiz of the Kilusan ng Manggagawang Kababaihan (KMK or Women Workers’ Movement) and Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU or May First Movement) Chairperson Jerome Adonis.
“These charges are an attack on workers’ rights and the democratic right to protest,” said CWR Executive Director Cham Perez.
According to reports, the arrest warrants were issued by the Metropolitan Trial Court (MTC) Branch 28 in connection with a workers’ rights protest on May 1, 2026. Both Ruiz and Adonis are being charged under Article 153 of the Revised Penal Code for alleged tumults and disturbances of public order.
For CWR, the charges are part of a continuing pattern of criminalization directed at workers and organizers who exercise their rights to organize, assemble, and protest.
“Instead of listening to workers’ demands for decent living wages, secure employment, and better working conditions, the government is choosing to criminalize those who raise these demands,” Perez said. “The use of criminal charges against labor leaders is a dangerous form of repression that seeks to intimidate not only the individuals being targeted, but also the broader labor movement,” Perez added.
CWR stressed that Ruiz’s case also highlights the need to safeguard women’s engagement in labor and community organizing. Women workers share the same forms of exploitation that workers face in general – low wages, insecure employment, and violations of labor rights. At the same time, they carry a disproportionate share of domestic work. Women’s organizations and women workers’ formations have thus played a significant role in raising these issues in public debate and collective action.
“Targeting women labor organizers does not only threaten their personal safety and security. It also undermines women’s capacity to collectively assert their rights in the workplace, in their communities, and in society,” Perez noted.
CWR emphasized that Ruiz’s decades of advocating for children’s and women’s rights and the well-being of vulnerable communities, as well as her organizing for workers’ rights, should not be used as grounds for criminalizing her advocacy.
Criminalization amid ongoing human rights violations
The arrest warrants must also be viewed within the broader context of the continuing human rights violations under the Marcos Jr. administration.
According to human rights group Karapatan, over 11 million people had been victims of various human rights violations from July 2022 to June 2026. It documented 147 cases of extrajudicial killing, 16 cases of enforced disappearance, 892 cases of arbitrary arrest, and 580 cases of forced or fake surrender, alongside thousands of incidents of indiscriminate firing and bombing since July 2022. Millions were likewise affected by forced evacuations, threats, harassment, intimidation, and red-tagging.
For CWR, the criminalization of labor organizers needs to be seen in this broader pattern of repression.
“Criminalizing protest is a way of silencing protest,” said Perez. “When workers are threatened with arrest for simply demanding a decent living wage, secure employment and their rights at work, the government is not dealing with the problems that cause people to protest in the first place. It is just an attack on those who expose them,” Perez added.
CWR noted that the rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, and freedom of association are fundamental democratic rights. Labor organizing and collective action are also protected under Philippine law and international human rights standards – to organize is not a crime, but a right. The organization urged the courts and concerned government agencies to junk the charges against Ruiz and Adonis and to stop using criminal cases to intimidate labor and human rights defenders.
Address workers’ demands, not suppress them
CWR called on the government to meet the legitimate economic needs of workers, instead of suppressing those who raise them.
“The government must stop treating workers’ demands as a threat to public order,” Perez said. “The real threat is a system that leaves millions struggling with low wages, insecure jobs, rising cost of living, and declining living conditions while those who challenge these conditions are harassed, intimidated, and criminalized. The criminalization of labor leaders and advocates does not address the conditions that drive the workers to protest. Instead, it suppresses the voices that call attention to these injustices,” Perez concluded.
CWR expressed solidarity with Ruiz, Adonis, and other workers and organizers facing criminalization, and called on the public to defend the right of workers and women organizers to organize, protest, and speak out without fear of reprisal.