Statement
June 15, 2025
As an organization committed to peace and social justice in the Philippines, ICHRP salutes the life of Luis Jalandoni, who recently passed away at the age of 90 in the Netherlands. Jalandoni, a priest, was the former head of the Social Action Centre in the Diocese of Bacolod, Negros Occidental, a founder of Christians for National Liberation, and a long-time chairperson of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and head of the NDFP Peace Negotiating panel. His contributions to social justice in the Philippines are innumerable, and immense.
He was a shining example of a person of faith living out their principles in the context of a repressive feudal society. Early in life as a Catholic priest, he came to understand the struggle and hardship of the impoverished people of Negros and made a life-long commitment to support their struggle for a better life. Faced with the repressive fascist society in which he lived and the collaborationist religious order, he carried out the Christian mandate to serve the poor and most oppressed by joining the revolutionary movement as a means to serve the peasants and workers of Negros.
Luis modeled the behaviours of a true Christian and a true revolutionary: humble, living a modest life, giving his inherited lands to the poor peasants so that they may know a better life. He provided leadership to other Christians who sought to struggle against social inequality and the Marcos dictatorship by forming the Christians for National Liberation (CNL). The CNL, who remain steadfast in their struggle today, provided a voice and vehicle for people of faith in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship and the struggle for national and social liberation.
For his advocacy and resistance, Ka Luis and his partner Coni Ledesma were arrested in 1973 and jailed by the Marcos Dictatorship for more than a year. After his stint as a political prisoner, he helped organize the first workers’ strike under Martial Law, at the la Tondeña distillery in 1975.
After going to exile in the Netherlands in 1976 Ka Luis spent the rest of his life building international solidarity for the people of the Philippines. Under his leadership, the NDFP exposed the excesses of the Marcos dictatorship to the rest of the world and built a global movement to support the struggle for liberation.
Since the mid 1980s, Luis served as the Chief Negotiator of the NDFP in peace negotiations with the Philippine government. His work on this front produced substantial progress and a number of joint agreements were signed contributing to the struggle for just and lasting peace. These included: the Hague Joint declaration which set the General Framework for the Peace Negotiations; the Joint Agreement on Security and Immunity Guarantees; and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.
In 2016, under his leadership the NDFP even went as far as the tabling of a framework for social and economic reforms as a foundation for a just and lasting peace. This last major peace initiative was under discussion with the GRP when the Duterte regime unilaterally terminated all existing peace agreements and unilaterally declared Ka Luis a terrorist. In peace negotiations, Jalandoni was an ardent advocate of peasants and workers in the Philippines and was unrelenting in pursuit of a genuine peace based on land reform and national industrialization. Jalandoni always put the needs of the oppressed first, firmly rejecting faulty solutions to the armed conflict that only sought surrender but ignored the social and economic roots of the armed conflict.
As ICHRP we admire and seek to emulate the life of Ka Luis in seeking to support the poor and oppressed based on values of social justice and a just peace built on a foundation of social political and economic equality. ICHRP’s upcoming solidarity conference in Rome called Pagtatanim: Sowing Seeds of Faith Solidarity for the Filipino People’s Struggle for Peace is an opportunity for people of faith from around the world to carry forward Ka Luis’ vision of a Philippine society based on democracy and social justice. The interfaith conference will serve to strengthen the solidarity movement for the Filipino people, and mobilize faith communities to accompany and support the most marginalized in the Philippines.
We salute Ka Luis and his unending commitment to the struggle for a better world for the poor and oppressed of the Philippines. We send condolences to his life-long partner and comrade, Ka Coni Ledesma.
