KARAPATAN denounces denial of entry to PH of int’l solidarity activist

As KARAPATAN concluded its 6th National Congress held in Quezon City, the human rights alliance denounced the denial of entry to the Philippines of one of its solidarity allies and an observer in its recently conducted event.

On October 5, 2024, US-based activist Copeland Downs, Chairperson of Portland Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines and an active member of the International Coalition on Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP)-US faith working group, was held by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration, his luggage searched and passport held, and was eventually deported. He was about to attend Karapatan’s National Congress as an observer in the sessions. Downs was told that he cannot enter the Philippines because he is on a blacklist for “attending a rally in 2022” in the Philippines. Downs denied the allegation and stated that he previously visited peasant and urban poor communities in the Philippines in an international observers mission that investigated the 2022 national elections. He had safely returned to the United States.

KARAPATAN Secretary General Cristina Palabay said that “like the previous regimes, the Marcos Jr. administration resorts to violations of the people’s right to international solidarity, to freedom of movement, and of other civil liberties to whitewash and hide the human rights and international humanitarian law violations that it commits against the Filipino people.”

“International solidarity groups and allies, as well as observers, who keenly monitor the human rights situation in the Philippines are put and kept on an insidious and arbitrary immigration blacklist. They are painted as criminals and terrorists in a desperate attempt to stop or derail them from speaking out in their countries on the extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, and bombings and forcible evacuation in communities, among others, that are occurring in the Philippines,” she said.

ICHRP has documented 17 incidents of attacks against solidarity activists and members of ICHRP since 2018. These attacks include: surveillance of solidarity activists while visiting the Philippines, harassment via placing tarpaulins up in the Philippines calling activists supporters of terrorist groups, red tagging ICHRP members on social media, and tagging state forces in Canada about ICHRP events. In addition, the Philippine government deported Australian activists Sister Patricia Fox and Gill Boehringer under the Duterte regime. Such are conducted amid ICHRP’s work on amplifying the human rights situation in the Philippines through its investigation missions and people’s tribunals.

“Meanwhile, Marcos Jr. lays out the red carpet for foreign troops of the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and others in joint military exercises that foment war in the Asia Pacific region and endanger the lives of Filipinos,” Palabay pointed out.

KARAPATAN called for the junking of the policy banning international solidarity activists through immigration blacklists, as it emphasized its call to the international community to strengthen its monitoring role and solidarity efforts on the human rights situation in the Philippines.