KARAPATAN Statement regarding Duterte’s repeated declarations justifying and encouraging state-sponsored violence, specifically the resort to extrajudicial killings, in order to curb criminality and impose law and order
KARAPATAN human rights alliance denounces presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte’s repeated, unabashed, and categorical statements justifying the state’s use of extrajudicial killings as a solution to social ills as well as to corruption and malfeasance in government.
KARAPATAN Statement regarding Duterte’s repeated declarations justifying and encouraging state-sponsored violence, specifically the resort to extrajudicial killings, in order to curb criminality and impose law and order
KARAPATAN human rights alliance denounces presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte’s repeated, unabashed, and categorical statements justifying the state’s use of extrajudicial killings as a solution to social ills as well as to corruption and malfeasance in government.
We cannot turn a blind eye much less applaud such an outright affront on human rights most especially in the light of our people’s horrific experience of the trampling of civil and political liberties that accompanied the brutal suppression of all democratic rights under the US-backed Marcos fascist dictatorship.
The Dictator Marcos justified martial rule to defend the state from the “left” and the “right”, i.e. the oligarchic elite that monopolized wealth and power and the armed rebellions carried out by the communist-led New People’s Army and the Moro National Liberation Front. He also promised a “new society” where social discipline is enforced, law and order reigns supreme and peace abounds. This society would supposedly emerge from the sweeping reforms he promised to undertake.
But we know what authoritarian rule brought instead.
Mayor Duterte’s campaign promise is less grandiose; in fact it is straightforward as it is simplistic. Criminals, big and small, are evil and a bane to society. His favourite targets are presumed drug pushers and even users, kidnappers, and lately, rice smugglers but on occasion he also lashes out at corrupt or erring policemen and other government officials. In this way he curries favour with a public weary and exasperated with the prevailing criminality in the streets and more so in the corridors of power.
Mayor Duterte wishes to substitute extrajudicial killings carried out by persons-in-authority without clearly addressing the broken criminal justice system skewed in favor of the moneyed and those with powerful friends and connections. But rather than bringing about law and order, his publicly announced backing of extrajudicial killings abets lawlessness, human rights violations and abuse by state security forces (with their blackened human rights track record), and the impunity for such state-sponsored violence.
KARAPATAN reiterates that these issues are at the core of the people’s repudiation of the Aquino administration’s much ballyhooed "daang matuwid"–the kind of governance that has resulted in 304 extrajudicial killings of peasants, indigenous people especially the lumad in Mindanao and social activists including human rights defenders; illegal arrests, torture and detention; the militarization of schools and the forcible evacuation of thousands from communities where the Armed Forces of the Philippines and paramilitary groups spread terror. Mar Roxas, Aquino’s anointed one, has implemented and pledged to continue such a bloody human rights record.
But rather than ignore or tolerate candidate Duterte’s pronouncements that are anathema to the promotion and defense of human rights, we challenge him along with all the candidates now running for national office, to state loud and clear their stand as to the unabated, grievous human rights violations being inflicted on our people in the name of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism aka “peace and order” or “peace and development”. ###