KARAPATAN has never been evasive or dishonest about its mandate of monitoring, documenting, exposing and denouncing violations of human rights, which, since its establishment in 1995, have consistently involved state actors as perpetrators.
When state actors who have the obligation to respect, protect and uphold human rights brandish their power to do the opposite, it is cause for outrage. KARAPATAN has never been shy about advocating for the victims of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, many of whom are subjected to indignities, physically and psychologically tortured, and unjustly arrested and detained on the basis of perjured testimonies and planted evidence.
In the course of its work, KARAPATAN has observed that violations of human rights have rarely been committed by duty bearers who have gone rogue. Human rights have been violated by the military and the police because state policy dictates it. Former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte’s tirades illustrated his contempt for human rights and his hatred for human rights defenders, and the killings and incarceration of KARAPATAN workers under his watch offer ample proof of this.
Duterte even created an agency–the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC)–to systematically conflate human rights work with the armed rebellion, thereby justifying the use of state violence against organizations like KARAPATAN.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the NTF-ELCAC’s current principal, has not changed any of the policies and measures implemented by his predecessor that have led to the horrific human rights violations that the Duterte regime has long been infamous for. Is it any surprise that the current regime has committed the same human rights violations perpetrated by its predecessor?
As for the NTF-ELCAC, it has been intolerant of anyone deemed questioning or defying the status quo, let alone calling for change or actually taking action to achieve change. That is why the victims of NTF-ELCAC’s red-tagging are so many and so diverse, ranging from peasants, Indigenous People, workers, youth, artists, lawyers, church people, members of the academe, urban poor, members of the LGBTQIA community, public sector employees, parliamentarians, local and national government officials, even international human rights NGOs and experts, to the human rights workers of KARAPATAN. Throughout its existence, the NTF-ELCAC has red-tagged, harassed, intimidated, vilified and threatened thousands with graver violations of their rights. And it looks like the NTF-ELCAC has painted itself into a corner, with no way of getting out without being plastered with its own lies.
KARAPATAN will not be cowered by fascists from the NTF-ELCAC with distorted perspectives of human and people’s rights, just and lasting peace, justice and accountability. KARAPATAN will always choose to be on the side of the oppressed and the subjugated. We will always take to task those who trample on the people’s civil and political rights especially when they do so wielding the coercive power accorded to them by the state in order to protect vested interests.