Friends, families, and fellow activists from various mass organizations in Negros gathered at the Iglesia Filipina Independiente Cathedral in Bacolod City on Sunday, August 17, to pay tribute to slain human rights defender Zara Alvarez and to reiterate the call for justice five years after her killing.

Alvarez, a paralegal and education director of Karapatan-Negros, was shot dead by suspected state agents near her boarding house in Bacolod City on August 17, 2020, amid a spate of killings under former President Rodrigo Duterte’s counterinsurgency program.

“Today on her 5th year of her death in the hands of coward fascist death squads of Duterte we vow to continue her work and dedicated service to the people,” Human Rights Advocates Negros said in a statement during the tribute.

The group stressed that Alvarez was among more than a hundred activists killed in Negros Island under Oplan Kapayapaan, which rights defenders denounced as “the peace of the graveyard.”

“For years she was subjected to state-sponsored harassment, surveillance, red-tagging and trumped-up charges,” the group added, citing her inclusion in a 2018 “terror list” and a police tarpaulin in Negros Occidental branding her as an NPA member.

KARAPATAN also decried the continuing impunity, noting that “justice remains a distant goal, while Duterte, his cohorts and his foot soldiers remain unpunished for the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law that they so arrogantly perpetrated with impunity.”

The rights alliance recalled that Alvarez was arrested in 2012 on false murder charges, detained for almost two years, and cleared in 2020 for lack of evidence, only to be killed five months later.

“Zara exemplified the red-tagged victim who ran the gamut of being vilified, unjustly arrested, detained and exonerated only to be extrajudicially killed in the end for persisting in her advocacy,” KARAPATAN said.

Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of the Diocese of San Carlos, in his reflection, described Alvarez as “a gentle friend and a fierce defender” whose smile “always carried a quiet resolve to teach, to lift up, and to walk alongside the people.”

“She stirred the Church to stand where Jesus stands, on the side of the poor and neglected,” Alminaza said, urging the faithful to keep Alvarez’s memory alive in both prayers and struggles.

Advocates vowed to continue pressing for accountability, stressing, “We must be relentless in demanding justice for Zara and other victims in Negros, and we must resist state fascism and attacks on our democratic rights.”