Amanda ECHANIS
A poet, writer and activist, Amanda Echanis has been held in pre-trial detention since she was arrested at her home alongside her then one-month-old baby on 2 December 2020, where she was charged with illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and explosives, a charge that is routinely used against those who have been ‘red-tagged’ - or accused by government authorities or its proxies of having links to communist insurgency groups. Echanis has flatly rejected the allegation and has accused the Philippines authorities of planting evidence.
Echanis has been detained for over four years since her arrest, with court hearings repeatedly postponed. The right to a fair trial includes the right to be tried without undue delay, which for individuals denied bail requires that they be tried ‘as expeditiously as possible’. In 1990, Amanda Echanis’ father, a fellow activist in support of rural workers’ rights, was also arrested on the same charge that she now faces, which resulted in Echanis staying at a custodial detention centre with her parents when she was less than two years old, making her the country’s ‘youngest political prisoner’ at the time. The case against Echanis’ father was dismissed in 1992. In August 2020, just months before Amanda Echanis’ arrest, her father was brutally murdered in a case that remains unsolved.
Amanda Echanis is a writer, poet and activist. She is the author of several literary works and has continued to write from behind bars. In 2023, Echanis published a collection of her poetry and essays from prison, entitled Binhi ng Paglaya (Seeds of Liberation). She has also won the 2023 Southeast Asian Translation Mentorship, established by The Seams in conjunction with Ethos Books, who are supporting Echanis’ translation of Filipino poetry. In June 2024, Amanda Echanis participated in a prestigious creative writing workshop, the Palihang Rogelio Sicat, which is named after renowned Filipino novelist, Rogelio Sicat. First established in 1984, the workshop was convened in hybrid format for the first time to accommodate Echanis’ participation while she is being held in detention.