Political Repression, Culture of Impunity, Absence of Just Peace
The space to hold leaders to account continues to shrink following the mounting human rights violations committed against the poor and government’s perceived enemies. Through a sham drug war and counterinsurgency program, these attacks are mostly against working and rural peoples including indigenous peoples, women, urban poor and their advocates. These advocates include members of the Church, many of whom have been vilified, slapped with trumped-up charges and even extrajudicially killed.
State perpetrators (police and military) and their agents remain scot free. Domestic redress mechanisms are more for show and do not result in justice for victims and their families. A prevailing culture of violence and impunity is constantly enabled by a Chief Executive who emphasize a “Kill, kill, kill policy”.
The pandemic has been weaponized against the people, with de-facto Martial law in place and their accompanying legal justifications : Anti-Terrorism Law (ATL) criminalizing dissent ; E.O 70 creating the NTF-ELCAC now enjoying a gargantuan PhP19 B used to red tag and vilify critics; and Memorandum 70 deploying more troops in Samar, Negros, Bicol provinces resulting in scores of activists arrested and killed. Foreign funds of NGOs are now under heavy scrutiny (already under the ATL) with a Department of Foreign Affairs note verbale requiring embassies in Manila to report these. This is also evident in a highly-militarised government, with 69 officials coming from the military and police, and occupying key positions for civilians. The most glaring of this is the Inter-Agency Task Force handling the Covid-19 pandemic run not by doctors and scientists, but retired generals preoccupied with militarized lockdowns and punitive measures.
The Duterte government has also closed its doors to finding just and lasting peace when it unilaterally terminated peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines last November 23, 2017 under Proclamation 360, and declared the CPP and NPA as “terrorist organizations” on December 5, 2017 under Proclamation 374. Peace consultants who are supposedly covered by the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG)(iii) have since been arrested on trumped-up charges, and worse, extrajudicially killed. Meantime, members of affected rural and indigenous communities are also victims of these killings on mere suspicion of being rebels and are displaced from their areas following intense government military operations. Various sectors and organisations, especially from the Church, have been calling for the resumption of the peace talks to address the roots of the armed conflict.
This tyrannical rule has been met with resistance by people’s organisations at local and international levels. People’s organisations bravely assert their rights and demand accountability in various campaigns. A total of 37 petitions against the ATA has been filed by various groups, including Church people, and are pending before the Supreme Court. Cases against the Duterte government on a broad range of people’s rights violations have been filed before the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the UN Human Rights Council has issued a report and resolution into the killings. People’s tribunals have indicted the regime and independent international actions by civil society organisations continue to press for accountability.
These days, suffering and death come in three ways: hunger due to wrong development path, Covid-19 as a result of a failed response, and state repression that brands critics as terrorists and deem them fair game for violence.
