Countdown to International Human Rights Day
Malacañang called the November 29 protest action of the Manilakbayan contingent at Times St., Quezon City “vandalism masquerading as legitimate protest”.
“It is a logical reaction from a regime that looks at governance as a game of masquerade instead of looking into and addressing the roots of people’s dissent,” said Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay.
Countdown to International Human Rights Day
Malacañang called the November 29 protest action of the Manilakbayan contingent at Times St., Quezon City “vandalism masquerading as legitimate protest”.
“It is a logical reaction from a regime that looks at governance as a game of masquerade instead of looking into and addressing the roots of people’s dissent,” said Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay.
Palabay said that all through the more than four years of the US-backed Aquino regime, it has resorted to dishing out catchy slogans to mask its attacks on the Filipino people. “BS Aquino’s Oplan Bayanihan instrumental in the bombing of communities, illegal arrests, detention, and killings of activists masqueraded as ‘peace and development, and respect for human rights’. The police brutality used against legitimate protest actions and during demolition of urban poor shanties masqueraded as ‘maintenance of peace and order’. The pork barrel system and the Development Acceleration Program or DAP masqueraded as ‘economic stimuli’.”
Benigno Aquino’s statements on extrajudicial killings and a host of human rights violations in the Philippines is a recording—a canned, predictable response if not a mantra he has to recite to convince himself that his regime is different from all the other regimes in the past, which committed transgressions on people’s rights and lives.
If not using catchy phrases, Palabay added, BS Aquino’s statements could be as delusional as this: “there has been a significant reduction of recorded or validated extralegal killings”. At times, he simply dismisses human rights violations committed under his regime as “baseless” or “propaganda”.
“Ten days from now, we will be commemorating the International Day of Human Rights—the fifth under the US-Aquino regime. Beyond the name-calling and outright lies, we no longer expect to hear from BS Aquino an accounting of his regime’s responsibility for the gross human rights violations committed against the people. But we keep tab. The US-Aquino regime stands on trial before the nation. The people are the witnesses and their own harrowing experiences under this regime, their testimonies,” said Palabay. (Please see below Tables of Human Rights Violations under the Aquino government as of November 2014).
Palabay cited as example the peasants and indigenous peoples of Mindanao who travelled to Metro Manila for more than a thousand kilometers. “Definitely they are here not to attend Aquino’s masquerade ball.” She said their lives are on the line as they defend the country’s remaining natural resources from plunder of big and foreign interests. “They are victims of the large-scale military operations by the 55 combat battalions of the AFP that are trying to pull-off a victory against the New People’s Army.”
By its own admission, the AFP said it has not made major victories against the NPA. “But, across the country, they attack civilians.” The AFP has directed its guns and bombs against the peasants and indigenous peoples in the remote and mountain communities believed to be strongholds of the CPP-NPA led revolutionary movement.
“The BS Aquino regime is bent on waging a war that perpetuates the same rotten system that exploits and oppresses the Filipino people. Like his predecessors, he continues to wage a futile war that does nothing to address the roots of the civil war that is raging,” concluded Palabay.
