Human rights group Karapatan said that this would only lead to more human rights violations in the context of the numerous reported cases of extrajudicial killings especially with the police and military’s repeated use of the ‘nanlaban’ (fought back) narrative, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other grave violations.
It should be evident from its name alone that PDP-Laban was committed to the recovery and defense of the democratic institutions martial law had destroyed, and to the people’s sovereign right to decide for themselves what government can best represent them.
It shows an utter lack of rigor in the exercise of his duties as commander-in-chief, for instance, to vet intelligence information. It also indicates how lightly, if at all, he regards his oath of office to “faithfully and conscientiously fulfill my duties as President of the Philippines, preserve and defend its Constitution, execute its laws, do justice to every man and consecrate myself to the service of the Nation.”
It also revealed that the red-tagging of lawyers and judges under the present administration has led to the killing of more lawyers and judges at 54 compared to that during the term of Arroyo where 45 lawyers and judges were killed in the line of work.
The petition started with only 500 signatures of people from different sectors of the society.
“We do not need a leader who fuels fear or division. We need one who can unite all Filipinos of various beliefs in this one big fight to save the nation. Duterte is not this leader. He has done too much damage to our people. He will never change. He must resign.”
The Duterte administration will end in 2022, but Dutertism could still continue to afflict the country for the next six years and even beyond should any of Mr. Duterte’s lackeys, cronies, clones, and surrogates win the presidential election that year.
Church leaders expressed alarm and concern at the deteriorating prospects for peace as shown by the Rodrigo Duterte government’s demonization of human rights.
“There is no doubt that the policies and operations under the Duterte administration are responsible for the onslaught of extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations under the ‘war on drugs.’ State officials and police forces were both brazen and confident that they would enjoy impunity in their crimes.” -- Rise Up
“Rights are not won through silence, through fence sitting and inaction. Rights are won and claimed through difficult, arduous, beautiful, creative and vibrant struggle.”
For the Makabayan bloc and other progressive organizations, the recently concluded Senate hearing on red-tagging will be used by state security forces as a justification to declare them as terrorists under the Anti-Terror Law.
"National government officials must act now or step down from their positions. No compromises."
It explains why it is abridging the people’s right to information: it is to prevent the citizenry from demanding that government truly address the roots of poverty by, among other means, curbing the dishonesty in public office that contributes to the hopelessness, hunger and despair that has led many Filipinos to take up the gun. His own regime is in that sense at cross-purposes with Mr. Duterte’s oft repeated promise to end corruption.
Both reactions provoke further criticism and even outrage not only from ordinary citizens but even from their fellow officials themselves. No one can blame those who, as a result, end up concluding that regime bureaucrats focus on non-essentials because the administration they’re serving can’t even articulate its own policies and actions.
Several times in the last four years, whenever he talked about his “war on drugs” carried out by the Philippine National Police and the thousands of killings attributed to it, President Duterte insistently denied the killings were state-sponsored, or that they had...
The group continues to demand justice for all victims of enforced disappearance and to hold into account the perpetrators. There are more than 1,000 who disappeared from Marcos dictatorship until the present administration, according to Desaparecidos.
Could Senator Leila de Lima be right? Was President Rodrigo Duterte’s speech as “plastic and (as) fake as the dolomite beach”? Did he not really mean what he said? Senator De Lima was primarily alluding to Mr. Duterte’s pre-recorded speech before the United Nations...
Last week I wrote about President Duterte’s principal adviser on intelligence owning up before Congress that he had shared posts on social media from four spurious Facebook pages, without verifying the source and veracity of the information. That admission, I...
It’s a legitimate public concern to raise such a question, in light of what the designated “principal adviser to the President on intelligence” has owned up to: that he had been sharing posts on social media without verifying the source and the veracity of the...
“There are ways forward. But certainly, the international community has a role in attaining justice, especially [since] the domestic mechanisms are severely compromised,”
A community of readers and supporters that help us sustain our operations through microdonations for as low as $1.