Free All Political Prisoners! Transnational Faith-Based Activism in the Filipino Diaspora

“As long as the detainee asserts his rights and deepens his commitment to serve the people, he remains free,” wrote Karl Gaspar, a Filipino priest, activist, and political prisoner. Gaspar was one of 70,000 persons who were arrested under the dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines. More recent literature has drawn attention to the activism of church people, particularly Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, and this paper seeks to build on this foundation by showing how political prisoners, like Gaspar, asserted their freedom and continued fighting the Marcos dictatorship through their prison writings and relationships with human rights organizations abroad. Specifically, this paper argues that, in these circumstances, Filipino and non-Filipino priests, missionaries, and nuns in the United States articulated a framework of human rights rooted in a Philippine-based liberatory theology of Christianity and faith-based concepts of international solidarity. Examining the intersections of political prisoner agency and faith-based activism in the diaspora reveals how grassroots activists tested and challenged the rhetoric of human rights of U.S. politicians, and attempted to make concrete changes to U.S. foreign policy in the Philippines, specifically ending military aid to Marcos. The experiences of Filipino political prisoners and activists in the diaspora show how U.S. histories of Southeast Asia need closer examinations of non-elite actors, and how relationships across national, racial, and ethnic boundaries work towards the downfall of authoritarian regimes and U.S. imperialism.