As Marcos Jr. delivers his fifth State of the Nation Address, the rampage of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law continues across the country. The Marcos Jr. government continues to unleash state terror and fascist repression to suppress dissent and prevent any opposition to its unabated plunder and subservience to foreign imperialist interests.
Last year, Marcos Jr. made the corrupt practices in relation to flood control projects the centerpiece of his fourth SONA. Yet, beyond a few individuals who have been charged and detained, the Filipino people have yet to see genuine accountability for the massive corruption that allegedly siphoned off public funds, all the way to the highest levels of government.
Instead, those who demand accountability and justice face arrest, detention, harassment, and the worst forms of human rights violations. As the people rise against corruption, poverty, rising prices, low wages, and anti-people policies, the state responds with intimidation, harassment, arrests, violent dispersals, and, worse, killings and enforced disappearances.
Under Marcos Jr.’s watch, Karapatan has documented 147 cases of extrajudicial killings, 16 cases of enforced disappearances, and 892 cases of illegal or arbitrary arrests. Despite Marcos Jr.’s attempts to distance himself from Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, killings have continued under his administration, with 1,289 victims documented under his anti-drug campaign, according to the Dahas Project.
Despite the government’s repeated denial of their existence, at least 165 activists and government critics have been arrested under Marcos Jr.—an average of one person per week over the past four years. They are among the 560 political prisoners currently incarcerated across the country, many of whom have been charged with common crimes to obscure the political nature of their arrest and detention.
Marcos Jr.’s silence on these human rights violations reflects his government’s direct accountability for abuses committed under its counterinsurgency program, the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace and Development (NAP-UPD). The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), formed under the Duterte regime, remains central to its implementation. Communities continue to bear the brunt of military operations and encampment in the countryside and the suppression of their legitimate demands for land and rights. Karapatan has documented 70,028 victims of indiscriminate firing, 59,284 cases of bombing, and 49,459 cases of forced evacuation under the Marcos Jr. administration.
Civilians are falsely portrayed by the military as rebels killed in armed encounters to justify military atrocities. Only months before this SONA, 19 people were killed in Toboso, Negros Occidental, including community journalists, peasant advocates, students and activists. The Negros 19 massacre showed the military’s grave disregard for human rights and international humanitarian law, as it sought to whitewash the killings and evade accountability as the perpetrators of the massacre continue to terrorize communities.
Individuals, particularly those from rural communities and urban poor communities, are also subjected to forced or fake surrenders, and more threats, in the Marcos Jr. government’s desperate attempt to quell dissent and manufacture the illusion of winning the counterinsurgency campaign. Karapatan has documented 580 cases of forced or fake surrenders and 11,302,433 individuals of threats, harassment, and intimidation.
The administration has also weaponized the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 and the Terrorist Financing Prevention and Suppression Act of 2012 against activists, human rights defenders, development workers, church groups, and other organizations. At least 256 individuals have been designated as “terrorists” or subjected to terrorism-related charges; 25 are currently detained, while two have been forcibly disappeared. Bank accounts belonging to at least 17 organizations, including development and church-based groups, have also been frozen, severely disrupting their humanitarian, development, and human rights work. These measures have further narrowed the country’s shrinking civic space and threatened the people’s freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.
In continued subservience to US imperialism, Marcos Jr. has further aligned the Philippines with US’ strategic interests, making Filipinos potential cannon fodder in the midst of imperialist wars. The Marcos Jr. administration now showcases the Luzon Economic Corridor and the US-backed Pax Silica project as “pathways toward economic prosperity and security.” These projects which further expose the administration’s puppetry to the US at the expense of the Philippines’ environment, sovereignty, and national interests, should be met with greater protests.
The Filipino people have every reason to condemn and reject the Marcos Jr. government, as its crimes and violations of the people’s rights continue to pile up more than halfway through its term.
As Marcos Jr. delivers his fifth State of the Nation Address, the Filipino people will continue to demand an end to the rampage of human rights violations, an end to state terror and repression, and genuine accountability for Marcos’ crimes committed against the people. We will assert our right to protest, and we will persist in demanding genuine change.