Philippine Human Rights Information Center’s (PhilRights) statement on the 72nd International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2020.
Today, December 10, we commemorate International Human Rights Day with an urgent reminder of the Philippines’ worsening human rights crisis prompted by unending State violence and impunity under President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
Weaponizing the Pandemic
The so-called war on drugs, a campaign premised on violence and violations of the fundamentals of the rule of law, has continued unabated in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and remains, in implementation and effect, a war on the poor.
In urban poor communities monitored by PhilRights, cases of torture and inhuman treatment were reported, including beatings and denial of food. Nationwide, the weaponization of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in at least 100,000 lockdown-related arrests. Meanwhile, prominent administration and law enforcement figures flouted the very same lockdown guidelines the citizens are harshly penalized for. This double standard of injustice has become a hallmark of the current regime.
Assaults on Civic Spaces
The Duterte regime’s attacks against human rights defenders and critics have intensified, with reckless red-tagging, killings of activists and left-identified personalities. The media, a crucial partner in any pandemic response, continued to suffer an onslaught of attacks, from the questionable conviction of Rappler’s Maria Ressa for cyberlibel to the closure of television network ABS-CBN, on top of continued killings of journalists.
Instead of focusing on crafting a coherent, health-based pandemic response, the Duterte government and an enabling legislature instead successfully pushed for the passage of the Anti-Terror Law. No less than the United Nations has called out the measure’s vague definitions as possibly violating the principle of legality. Its provisions, the UN added, “dilutes human rights safeguards.”
Stop the Violence, End Impunity
The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown have been used by the State to further erode human rights and weaken whatever is left of the country’s democracy. Rampant violence and unchecked impunity have pervaded throughout the country even as citizens have had to endure the government’s bumbling handling of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the poorest and the most marginalized continue to suffer the worst consequences.
Today, as human rights defenders and people all over the world mark International Human Rights Day, we call on all Filipinos to demand the State to Stop the Violence and End Impunity!
