By Fides Lim / Spokesperson, KAPATID
Amanda Lacaba Echanis is free.
After five stolen years, a court has finally thrown out the fabricated charges against Amanda Lacaba Echanis. But this freedom was won despite the system, not because of it.
This recollection I wrote at the time of her arrest in December 2020—one that drew over a thousand likes and shares—not only to remember the little girl we called Tata but to affirm the breadth of solidarity that surrounded Amanda then and sustained the struggle until now. I also republish it in memory of her father, Randall Echanis, who should have been a political prisoner like so many others had he not been murdered on August 20, 2020.
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Vic and I have known Amanda Lacaba Echanis since childhood when she was also detained at Camp Crame with her parents, Randall and Linda, who were arrested ahead of us in August 1990. She was maybe around 2. We called her Tata until she decided sometime in her teenage years to be called by the more serious-sounding Amanda.
Tiny, with doleful eyes, which seemed too big and old for her, baby Amanda maybe saw more than we did. I remember we would all laugh whenever she blurted out the individual owners of all the water pails and water jugs (for drinking water) lined up every morning in front of the gripo in the open area outside the common kitchen. She could also identify all the clothes hanging up to dry per owner.
During that time, political prisoners could wear any color of shirt unlike today’s prescribed yellow (under trial) and orange (convicted). Couples arrested could also stay together until the wife was usually released ahead of the husband to allow her to attend to their family and her imprisoned husband.
Randy and Linda had their own kubol, strung up with cloth to provide some privacy while Linda breastfed Amanda and put her to sleep. After 6 months, Linda was released, way ahead of Randy. And she joined me, Josie (wife of Rudy Salas), Nymia (wife of Al Simbulan), Lu (wife of Raffy Baylosis) in KAPATID to work for the release of our husbands and all political prisoners.
It didn’t surprise me when bright, gentle Amanda passed the highly competitive exam for the Philippine High School for the Arts and then UP Diliman, and scripted a whole play about feisty Nanay Mameng, urban poor leader Carmen Deunida. I learned she could also paint and write poetry, a true Renaissance talent maybe owing to her illustrious genes.
Martyred poet-warrior Emmanuel Lacaba is her uncle, and so is writer-for-all-seasons Pete Lacaba, and Philippine Collegian colleague Billy Lacaba, all brothers of Linda. And of course, there’s martyred Randall whose contributions to the anakpawis movement outlive him.
Next I learned, as if following the footsteps of her father, Amanda was in Cagayan, working with the peasant women’s group Amihan.
But on December 2, the youngest political prisoner in our time became a political prisoner herself. Amanda was arrested in Baggao, Cagayan in a police crackdown on activist organizations in the province. She was foisted with firearms and explosives, just like Vic and so many other activists to deny them the right to bail and criminalize them.
She is also a first-time mother of a baby boy named Randall Emmanuel in honor of his double lineage of activist service. Just 22 days old, child and mother need to be kept together to prevent the government folly of another baby River who was torn apart, one-month old, from his mother, detained activist Reina Mae Nasino, while being breastfed.
Linda is also back now with me in KAPATID—as Linda should have been in August had Randy not been salvaged by the savages. But there is courage in sadness as our collective story about the past and present tense unfolds with new headings: Pushback, Fightback.
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Amanda was imprisoned not for a crime but for her commitment to serve the people—just as her martyred father Randy did, and as the Lacaba family have long done. Like so many political prisoners, she was framed with planted firearms and explosives to justify prolonged detention, deny bail, and break the spirit.
The court has now confirmed what human rights groups like KAPATID and other people’s organizations always asserted: THE CASE WAS A LIE.
What makes this cruelty even more unforgivable is that Amanda was arrested on December 2, 2020 as a new mother, her baby Randall Emmanuel barely weeks old—named for Lolo Randall, murdered for his principles, and for uncle Emmanuel Lacaba, martyred poet-warrior of the revolution. The state was prepared to repeat the horror inflicted on Reina Mae Nasino and baby River: tearing an infant from his mother to punish dissent. That this did not happen is due only to relentless pressure and solidarity.
For those of us who knew Amanda Echanis as a child, her imprisonment cuts especially deep.
History has repeated itself with brutal symmetry: the baby who once cradled behind bars became a mother jailed with her own child. This is not coincidence but systemic injustice.
Amanda’s acquittal is a victory—but it is also an indictment. An indictment of red-tagging, of manufactured cases, of a counterinsurgency machinery that criminalizes activism, targets families, weaponizes laws and courts, and turns prisons into tools of political repression.
Freedom after five years is not justice. Five years of Amanda’s life were stolen. Five years of her child’s early life were put at risk. Can a court ruling ever restore what repression took?
Justice means accountability for fabricated charges.
Justice means freedom for all political prisoners still jailed on lies.
Justice means never again stealing years from a mother, a child, a family, a movement.
For KAPATID and all families of political prisoners, this is both victory and reminder. We honor Amanda’s freedom by intensifying the struggle.
Our calls:
- Free all political prisoners.
- Drop trumped-up charges.
- End red-tagging and the criminalization of activism.
- Hold perpetrators of state repression accountable.
The struggle continues—until every cell built on lies is emptied. #
