KARAPATAN joins various sectors in renewing calls to convict Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity and hold him accountable for his other evil acts against the Filipino people.
We likewise hold Ferdinand Marcos Jr. accountable for his own transgressions against the people, many of them arising from his perpetuation of Duterte’s fascist policies.
Duterte is infamous for having caused the extrajudicial killings of up to 30,000 drug suspects, for which he is now facing charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
He also imposed martial law in Mindanao for close to two years, ordering the bombing of Marawi which left a trail of death and destruction and led to the displacement of more than 100,000 people in the war-torn city.
He ordered his fascist troops to go on a rampage throughout the rest of Mindanao, conduct air strikes to “flatten the hills,” lay siege to indigenous communities and close down Lumad schools. This wave of terror led to the closure of 56 Lumad schools all over the island, depriving over 2,000 Lumad students of their right to education. It also paved the way for more big business and mining interests to encroach on the Lumad’s ancestral lands. Between May 23, 2017 and January 1, 2020, Karapatan documented at least 110 victims of extrajudicial killings in Mindanao under martial law, and the forced evacuation of more than 400,000 individuals due to bombings and other military operations in their communities.
Duterte’s hands drip with the blood of peasant activists who bore the brunt of his attacks against the people. Out of the 422 victims of extrajudicial killings in Duterte’s counterinsurgency program, 336 were peasants. Fifteen out of the 21 forcibly disappeared victims during his regime were also from the peasantry.
Many of the human rights violations against the peasantry were the result of Duterte’s Memorandum Order No. 32 which called for the heightened militarization of Negros, Samar and the Bicol region. These areas combined accounted for almost 30% of the extrajudicial killings under Duterte’s watch. One of the most notorious cases is the Tumanduk Massacre, where nine indigenous activists on the island of Panay were killed by police forces ostensibly serving them warrants. The activists had been opposed to the construction of the destructive Jalaur Dam.
Not only did Duterte assault the peasantry through his militarist policies. The enactment of the Rice Tariffication Law under his term was purportedly done to bring down rice prices, but despite massive rice importations, rice prices remain high and the dumping of imported rice in local markets has only dislocated local agriculture and left farmers poorer. Fisherfolk also lost their livelihoods and coastal areas degraded when Duterte issued Executive Order No. 74, which fast-tracked reclamation projects nationwide and put them under Malacañang’s exclusive control.
The jeepney phaseout program which began under Duterte is another anti-poor scheme designed to forcibly displace local jeepneys with imported “modern jeepneys” costing up to P1.6 million each. The phaseout scheme has already adversely affected the livelihoods of tens of thousands of jeepney operators and drivers who could not afford the payments. The resulting shortage in jeepneys has also wrought havoc on transport routes, punishing commuters as well.
Duterte brutally cracked down on dissenters. The Bloody Sunday Massacre of March 7, 2021 in the provinces of Southern Tagalog saw the killings of nine labor, peasant, fisherfolk and indigenous rights activists, and the unjust arrest of several other human rights defenders. Duterte’s fascist forces justified the killings by echoing the discredited “nanlaban” modus of Oplan Tokhang.
Duterte carried over his militarist bent during the COVID-19 pandemic by employing a heavy-handed and punitive approach in controlling the spread of the virus. Mass arrests, cruel punishments and the inhumane detention of so-called quarantine violators marked Duterte’s response to the pandemic. More than 100,000 individuals were accosted and arrested for violating COVID-19 regulations. Worse, these emergency measures were conveniently used to restrict mass actions and protests.
The height of Duterte’s opportunism and corruption was seen during the pandemic when his regime awarded more than P10 billion in government contracts for emergency and other medical supplies to Pharmally, a shady, fly by night company with minimal start-up capital.
Duterte’s attacks on the media have been unprecedented since Marcos’ martial law. He ordered the filing of trumped-up tax evasion and libel charges against online news outlet Rappler, revoked the franchise of media conglomerate ABS-CBN which had come out with pieces critical of Duterte, and shut down the websites of alternative media outfits Pinoy Weekly, Bulatlat and AlterMidya. Duterte’s attack dogs went to the extent of branding as “communist sympathizers” a broad array of individuals who protested the ABS-CBN shutdown.
Duterte further escalated his anti-people attacks through the creation of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), which cast a wide net of repression over activists and other dissenters and even ordinary folk with its overly broad and vague definition of what constitutes terrorist acts. Together with the previously legislated Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act, these mechanisms worked hand in glove to cut down dissenting views and further shrink the civic space. The NTF-ELCAC and military troops specializing in psywar expanded their operations and swooped down on town centers and urban poor communities to profile and red-tag activists and coerce them into surrendering as armed rebels.
Duterte ended his term with 802 dissenters incarcerated in various jails and prisons nationwide, 591 of whom were arrested under his regime.
Duterte’s decision to rehabilitate the Marcoses by allowing a hero’s burial for the late dictator starkly demonstrated his contempt for the Filipino people who suffered tremendously under martial law. It was moreover a self-serving move by Duterte, who had mistakenly hoped for Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s protection against arrest and prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
Even Duterte’s gravitation towards China was self-serving and anti-Filipino, as he benefited from kickbacks derived from the big-ticket projects awarded to Chinese companies. He liked to project his pro-China stance as proof of standing up against the US, but in reality, he never revoked any of the treaties and agreements that continue to define the master-puppet relationship between the US and the Philippines.
Duterte’s successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., resorts to PR gimmickry to distance himself from the previous regime. In reality, he carries on to the hilt the fascist and plunderous legacy of both his predecessor and his dictator-father, and is equally accountable to the Filipino people.
The people resoundly repudiate both Duterte and Marcos Jr. and vigorously demand justice and accountability for their grievous crimes.