Human Rights Watch has called on Philippine authorities to drop charges against Indigenous protesters in the Philippines who were arrested during a police operation to clear an anti-mining barricade in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya. The appeal concerns 11 members of the Bugkalot/Ilangot and other Indigenous communities detained on 28 August during the dispersal of a barricade they had maintained since May to oppose mineral exploration by North Luzon Mineral Resources Corp. (NLMRC).
Charges Under the Revised Penal Code
Prosecutors charged the 11 with grave coercion under Article 286 and resistance and disobedience under Article 151 of the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines. Both offences carry potential custodial terms of up to six months. The protesters were released on bail on 1 September, but the charges remain pending.
The 28 August operation also left two people injured, according to Daily Tribune reporting on the Nueva Vizcaya mining dispute. The mass arrest was not an isolated incident: approximately two weeks earlier, three people had been separately detained at the same barricade.
The Permit Dispute and Competing Land Claims
At the centre of the conflict is an NLMRC exploration permit granted on 25 June 2025, which authorises the company to prospect for gold, copper, and other minerals across approximately 4,456 hectares in the area, according to Inquirer reporting on residents’ permit revocation petition.
NLMRC says it consulted two communities twice in March 2024 and obtained certification from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) stating that the permit area does not overlap with ancestral domain. Under NCIP Administrative Order No. 03, where a permit area does not overlap any certified or claimed ancestral land or domain, the NCIP is required to issue such a certification within seven days of receiving the relevant field-based investigation report, as set out by the Philippine Judiciary e-Library’s record of the administrative order.
Residents opposing the project contend they hold a Certificate of Land Ownership Award confirming their rights as agrarian reform beneficiaries. They have petitioned the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to cancel the permit, arguing that affected communities were not adequately consulted. On 13 July 2026, Indigenous residents from the province travelled to Quezon City to protest outside the Mines and Geosciences Bureau and the DENR, according to Human Rights Watch.
Provincial and municipal officials have since brokered a temporary agreement under which NLMRC personnel and equipment are to remain outside the site while negotiations continue.
Drop Charges Against Indigenous Protesters: A Wider Pattern in the Philippines
The call to drop charges against Indigenous protesters in the Philippines sits within a longer history of conflict between mining interests and local communities in Nueva Vizcaya. In 2020, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines found that police had violently dispersed an Indigenous community barricade in Didipio, injuring several people, and called for an investigation.
Resistance has sometimes succeeded. According to Global Voices, Indigenous communities in Nueva Vizcaya previously forced Royal Co Mining Corporation to withdraw in 2008, and a more recent people’s barricade compelled the suspension of Woggle Corporation’s exploration activities in a separate part of the province, in Dupax del Norte.
Human Rights Watch has also raised concerns beyond Kasibu, publishing a news release in August 2026 on revised government guidelines it argued threatened Indigenous consultation rights more broadly across the Philippines.
The Kasibu case turns on whether NLMRC’s consultations met the standard of free, prior, and informed consent required under Philippine law. With the 11 accused still facing prosecution and the DENR petition unresolved, the outcome of those parallel proceedings will test how far administrative certification of non-overlap insulates a permit from challenge by communities who say they were never meaningfully consulted.
