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Thousands attended rallies in Manila over a corruption scandal linked to ghost flood control projects that cost taxpayers billions of dollars.<\/em><\/p>\n Published On 22 Sep 2025<\/span>22 Sep 2025<\/span><\/p>\n Click here to share on social media<\/p>\n share2<\/p>\n More than 200 people have been arrested following clashes between police and masked protesters at an anticorruption demonstration in the Philippine capital, Manila.<\/p>\n In a statement on Monday morning, the regional police said while most rallies the day before were peaceful, the gathering in Ayala Bridge and Mendiola \u201ceven though unprovoked, turned very violent\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cProtesters turned mobs assaulted police officers with stones and anything they could get their hands on. Not satisfied with harming police officers in uniform, violent protesters set motorcycles on fire, vandalised and ransacked a business establishment,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n It added that police arrested 224 suspects, some of whom were minors.<\/p>\n At least 131 officers were wounded in the clashes, some of whom were \u201cvery serious\u201d, but are now receiving medical treatment.<\/p>\n Reporting from Manila, Al Jazeera\u2019s Barnaby Lo explained that while some sense of normalcy returned to the streets of Manila on Monday morning, \u201cthere is a heavier police presence than usual\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSchools are closed, a curfew for minors has been imposed as investigations into alleged corruption in flood control projects continue, more protests are expected, and at this point they could be unpredictable,\u201d Lo said.<\/p>\n On Sunday, thousands attended rallies in Manila over a corruption scandal linked to ghost flood control projects that cost taxpayers billions of dollars.<\/p>\n While the protest was mainly peaceful, with more than 33,000 rallying in a historic park and a democracy monument in Manila, some took a different route.<\/p>\n Police said they used tear gas to disperse those who sprayed graffiti on walls, toppled steel posts, shattered glass panels and ransacked the lobby of a budget inn along a popular road.<\/p>\n Regional police spokesperson Major Hazel Asilo told the AFP news agency that none of those arrested has so far shared their reasoning or if \u201csomebody paid them to do it\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as we know their affiliations, we can know if they were part of the protesters or if they were just causing trouble,\u201d Asilo added.<\/p>\n Protesters march towards police after destroying the blockade during a protest denouncing what they call corruption linked to flood control projects, in Manila, Philippines, September 21, 2025 [Lisa Marie David\/Reuters]<\/p>\n Earlier, protests erupted in other Asian countries, including Indonesia and Nepal, in recent weeks over government conduct and corruption.<\/p>\n For Filipinos, anger in the country had been mounting since July after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr uncovered the ghost infrastructure projects during a state-of-the-nation address.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel bad that we wallow in poverty and we lose our homes, our lives and our future while they rake in a big fortune from our taxes that pay for their luxury cars, foreign trips and bigger corporate transactions,\u201d student activist Althea Trinidad told The Associated Press news agency.<\/p>\n According to the Department of Finance, the Philippine economy is estimated to have lost up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2bn) from 2023 to 2025 due to corruption in flood control projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thousands attended rallies in Manila over a corruption scandal linked to ghost flood control projects that cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Published On 22 Sep 202522 Sep 2025 Click here to share on social media share2 Share More than 200 people have been arrested following clashes between police and masked protesters at an anticorruption demonstration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[5709,6058,150,14089,494],"class_list":{"0":"post-23032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-anticorruption","9":"tag-arrested","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-philippines","12":"tag-protests"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n