Community doctor, human rights advocate, arrested by San Juan City cops
By The News Team
A doctor to the people and human rights advocate was arrested by police earlier today, February 18, according to her family.
In a Facebook post, Jun Castro, the brother of Dr. Ma. Natividad “Naty” Castro, said that her younger sister was arrested by the San Juan City Police in their home around 9:30 in the morning. This was immediately confirmed by the office of San Juan City Police Chief Police Colonel Elpidio Ramirez.
In a statement, the Philippine National Police (PNP) confirmed the arrest, accusing Dr. Castro of being a central committee member of the Communist Party of the Philippines — New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) and tagged her as the alleged head of the CPP-NPA’s National Health Bureau.
However, this was countered by his brother saying that Dr. Castro worked in Mindanao to provide medical services and human rights assistance to the people. He added that his younger sister went home to San Juan City in 2020 to take care of their mother.
In a report from Rappler, Jun confirmed that the cases filed were all connected to his sister’s volunteer work as a community doctor and human rights and development worker. The same report by Rappler revealed that the warrant of arrest named Dr. Castro as one of the respondents in kidnapping and serious illegal detention cases filed in Agusan Del Sur.
Meanwhile, Karapatan, a human rights group in which Dr. Naty served as their former secretary-general, is still currently locating the whereabouts of Dr. Castro in Butuan City, Caraga where she was supposedly flown in right after being brought in to the PNP Intelligence Group Building inside Camp Crame.
The group urged the PNP to respect the rights of Dr. Castro particularly on her rights to access her immediate family, lawyers, doctors, and paralegals, against unlawful interrogation, and access to her medicine as she has hypertension and diabetes.
Prior to today’s arrest, Dr. Castro has been subjected to red-tagging by state forces due to her human rights advocacies and community programs which primarily aimed at giving local poor communities health access and human rights services, particularly for Lumad communities in Mindanao. It was to be remembered that in 2020, she brought a few Lumad people to the United Nations in Geneva to ask for help against harassment in Lumad communities.
Dr. Naty Castro was the 1984 class valedictorian of St. Scholastica Manila and was named as one of the 100 most outstanding students of the same educational institution in the last century. She completed her higher education at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman where she graduated cum laude and then finished her medical doctor degree from the UP College of Medicine (UPCM), UP Manila.
The UPCM class of 1995 issued a statement calling for the immediate release of their classmate whom they described as “a servant leader actively involved in health and human rights and working towards providing health care for all by serving in rural and geographically isolated areas.” They also called for the end of harassment and intimidation tactics to Dr. Naty Castro and her family.
Dr. Castro is the latest victim of militarization against human rights defenders and community workers of this current administration. She is among the many community doctors, community workers, and human rights defenders who have been at the receiving end of red-tagging by the state, making their lives vulnerable to any attacks.
