Activists and community organizers like the Banjawan sisters are no longer just “arrested” or “disappeared”. They end up experiencing torture to break their spirit before returning them to the land of the living, denied of their liberty for the crime of finding a cause worthy of their life and dignity.

SAN PABLO, Laguna – Over the past two decades, low-cost government housing projects have sprouted out all over Laguna. By far the largest of these is Southville 1, which spans three barangays in the city of Cabuyao.

Rowena Banjawan or Tita Weng is one of the many residents of Southville 1. Like many others, she and her family were forced to relocate after a series of demolitions displaced them. She and her family used to live along the railroad in Makati City.

The conditions in Southville 1 were terrible. “We barely had anything,” she said in an interview with Bulatlat. “No running water, no electricity. We had to find our own materials to build our houses.”

Tita Weng became a member of women’s group Gabriela and successfully campaigned for basic services in their community. Her activism would rub off on her eight children, all of whom were drawn to the path of struggle as well.

Two of her children are currently detained for their activism. While preparing for a consultation with women farmers, Fatima was abducted and subsequently arrested in August 2024. Pauline Joy, on the other hand, was arrested and detained in August 2025 during the 2025 midterm elections campaign period.

“I’ll never regret the choices [my children] made,” Tita Weng said. “I will always be proud that they decided to take the path of serving the people.”

A tale of two sisters

Pauline Joy or Poleng became an activist before Fatima.

Poleng was 10 years old when she thought about becoming a full-time organizer. Inspired by the struggles in their community, she understood at an early age that human rights are not freely given.

After finishing elementary school, Poleng gave herself to activist work. She would help out making placards and other propaganda materials. Sometimes she would emcee for protest actions. “There were times where she wouldn’t come home,” Tita Weng said. “I’d ask her where she spent the night and she’d only reply, ‘Do you really have to ask? You know how it is for full-timers.’”

It wasn’t as if there was much of a choice. As much as Tita Weng wanted Poleng to continue her studies, there simply were no options for people living on the fringes of poverty. Most schools in Laguna are privatized. According to Kabataan Partylist Laguna, 69 out of the province’s 81 higher educational institutions are private. Public school access is also marred by the cost of uniforms, books, transportation, school supplies and other needs.

Labor unions under the Organized Labor Associations in Line Industries and Agriculture (OLALIA-KMU) helped Poleng continue her studies. By 15, she graduated under Department of Education’s Alternative Learning System. 

When not in school, she would help around the OLALIA office doing technical work or helping facilitate discussions. After graduating, she continued her work volunteering in OLALIA’s education staff before becoming a community organizer for Kadamay Southern Tagalog.

When she turned 18, Poleng formally became a full-timer although she said that she had been one for the past eight years. Poleng found herself in the thick of struggles across the Southern Tagalog region, from opposing quarrying and open-pit mining operations in Santo Tomas, Batangas to helping communities fight privatization efforts disguised as eco-tourism in San Pablo, Laguna’s Seven Lakes.

Meanwhile, Fatima was brought up under similar circumstances, seeing all of her siblings and their mother active as volunteers or as community organizers. She first became a volunteer for the Southern Tagalog Cultural Network, a multidisciplinary group of performers and artists focused on community organizing. 

Fatima was a staple in street performances as an actor or dancer. Eventually she found herself leading and teaching others how to perform. While Poleng was comfortable in front of a mic or in an educational discussion, Fatima’s element was during a flag dance or in the middle of a tableau.

She eventually joined Gabriela Youth to organize the community youth like herself. During the pandemic, Fatima helped coordinate relief efforts while also calling out the Duterte administration’s militaristic approach to the lockdown. She was one of eleven activists arrested in Cabuyao on July 4, 2020, the day after the Anti-Terrorism Law was passed. The charges against her and her fellow activists would eventually be dropped.

Like Poleng, Fatima would eventually turn 18 and formally declare herself a full-time organizer. And like her older sister, she is expected to say that she has been “FT all her life.”

A time of monsters

Fatima was initially arrested on the night of August 2, 2024. Military agents raided the house where she spent the night and abducted her. She was surfaced a few days later with fresh charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives. 

A fact-finding mission from Karapatan Southern Tagalog showed that Fatima was tortured both physically and mentally during the time she was held incognito. According to the group, Fatima was coerced to “surrender” as a member of the New People’s Army. She was then detained in Camarines Norte, a long way from Cabuyao.

Whenever she could, Tita Weng would visit Fatima in jail. She was there during hearings. If visiting proved to be impossible, whether due to time or financial constraints, Tita Weng found the time to call her daughter.

Poleng suffered the same fate on April 26, 2025. She was abducted by elements of the military while preparing to join a campaign sortie by progressive party-list Bayan Muna. 

Like Fatima, Poleng was held incognito, deprived of sleep and rest, threatened, and made to drink truth serum. She was asked repeatedly to admit that she was a high-ranking member of the NPA, and to identify names and places. The military implied that Tita Weng was “next on the list,” and that not even Poleng’s own infant daughter was safe.

Tita Weng joined the fact-finding mission to find Poleng. Two days later, when she was surfaced at the hands of the Batangas police, she could do nothing but hold her tight. “Don’t cry,” she told Poleng. “We don’t cry in front of the enemy.”

Fatima found out about her sister’s predicament when Tita Weng visited and called Poleng. Both were surprised, but it was Fatima who offered the same words of encouragement her mother said, telling her older sister to “stay firm” and not to cry.

The tragic similarities of how the two sisters were abducted and resurfaced reflect a change in the state’s tactics of persecution. Activists and community organizers like the Banjawan sisters are no longer just “arrested” or “disappeared”. They end up experiencing torture to break their spirit before returning them to the land of the living, denied of their liberty for the crime of finding a cause worthy of their life and dignity.

Poleng and Fatima’s cases reflect the general circumstances surrounding the more than 700 political prisoners detained in the country. Their abductions are like those of Jonila Castro and Jhed Tamano, or of Dyan Gumanao and Armand Dayoha; the torture reminiscent of Alexa Pacalda, and the arrest of a new mother like Amanda Echanis and her baby.

Does this make their case any less unique? If anything, the fact that one can draw so many similarities in two cases makes the entire incident all the more tragic and infuriating.

Standing tall

“It’s tough,” Tita Weng confessed when asked how she dealt with having two daughters in jail. “Sometimes, I don’t know what to do. There are days that I just want to cry. If it wasn’t for the comrades helping me, I might have lost hope a long time ago.”

Today, Tita Weng continues to juggle the roles of a mother and an activist. She is no passive observer as two of her daughters face trumped-up charges. “People in power want to silence us, the people who know how to fight back,” she said. “There is nothing wrong in fighting for our rights. What’s wrong is living in a society where families can’t meet their basic needs.”

She currently works in Gabriela Southern Tagalog as a full-time organizer while also actively campaigning for the release of her two daughters. Despite everything, Tita Weng can do nothing but stand in the face of injustice. (DAA)