As Ferdinand Marcos is set to deliver his State of the Nation Address on Monday, Hustisya (Victims United for Justice) assailed the Marcos Jr. regime for its failure to attain justice for victims of extrajudicial killings both under its watch and during the Duterte regime.
“One need only look at the outcome of the sham investigations conducted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the Bloody Sunday Massacre of March 7, 2021, where nine activists from Southern Tagalog were extrajudicially killed,” said Hustisya national board member Atty. VJ Topacio. “The policemen who were charged in the killings of BAYAN-Cavite coordinator Manny Asuncion and activist couple Ariel and Ana Mariz Evangelista were all exonerated by the DOJ under Marcos Jr.”
“With no justice forthcoming from institutions in their own country, the victims’ families have been left with no recourse but to file a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Committee in hopes that their grievances will be heard,” Topacio added.
“Under Marcos Jr., there have so far been 129 victims of extrajudicial killings. Not a single perpetrator has been brought to justice,” she decried. “In the vast majority of cases, the victims are civilians falsely portrayed as rebels killed in armed encounters so their killers could evade accountability for their crimes.”
Hustisya also cited the more than a thousand killed under Marcos’ anti-drugs campaign, as monitored by the Dahas project. “There has been no renunciation of the Duterte memorandum on Oplan Tokhang and Oplan Double Barrel,” Topacio said.
“Marcos Jr. has been fond of creating task forces to probe EJKs and other human rights violations as part of his public relations drive to distance himself from his predecessor’s sordid image,” said Topacio, “but these are just empty gestures in the face of the growing number of EJKs under his own regime.”
“As long as Ferdinand Marcos Jr. follows the same fascist policies perpetrated by Duterte, the same evil pattern of EJKs, enforced disappearances, unjust arrests and detentions of dissenters will persist,” he stressed. “Hustisya will continue to stand in solidarity with the victims of injustice and their families in their unceasing quest to seek justice and demand accountability.”