Join the fight for human rights in the Philippines
Written by Katelin Ling Cooper
Content warning: violence, death, murder and drugs.
On Dec. 7, 2021, the Supreme Court of the Philippines voted on the constitutionality of the Anti-Terror Law, which has been used to arrest members of Filipino grassroots movements and human rights advocates on trumped-up charges due to linking protest, advocacy and activism as a form of “terrorism.”
What is the Anti-Terror Law (ATL)?
Passed in 2020, this law broadly and vaguely defines “terrorism” as any actions or intentions to cause or create “intimidation of the public, promotion of messages of fear, intimidation of the government, destruction or destabilization of the economy, politics, and society, to create public emergency and undermine public safety.” This law enables the Philippine government to label any group or individual who is suspected of committing “terrorism” — effectively weaponizing the Anti-Terror Law to target and silence anyone who expresses any form of criticism or dissent against the Duterte administration.
Since being elected as president of the Philippines in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte has been actively committing human rights violations and abuse against activists, organizers and anyone who voices criticism of the violence and abuse enacted by the Duterte regime, without regard to protecting democratic rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly.
On Dec. 9, 2021, the Philippine Supreme Court announced that it upholds the majority of the Anti-Terror Law, only finding two aspects of the ATL to be unconstitutional: Justices struck Section 4 which had linked protest and activism to terrorism, determining this to be “overbroad and violative of freedom of expression.” Thus, public protests are to remain a protected political right so long as they “are not intended to cause death or serious physical harm … or to create a serious risk to public safety.” Additionally, justices deemed “a provision that allows an anti-terrorism council appointed by the president to adopt requests by other entities, including international organisations, to designate individuals and groups as terrorists” to be unconstituional.
In spite of these two small concessions, the ATL still enables the unjust detention of individuals without charges and without a warrant for up to 24 days. This law provision resembles the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law under the Obama administration, which authorizes anyone labeled a “suspected terrorist” to face arrest and indefinite detention without charge or trial.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decisions, human rights advocacy groups such as the Philippine democratic socialist party Akbayan and women’s rights grassroots advocacy group Gabriela issued statements condemning the Supreme Court ruling, and reaffirmed the call to action to junk the Terror Law.
In addition to the Anti-Terror Law, the Philippine government has developed tactics to discredit and terrorize various organizations and Filipino activists through the use of red-tagging.
The war on communism
Red-tagging is like doxxing on steroids. In 2018, Duterte assembled the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). This task force enables the government to target individual activists and organizers as terrorists, thus exposing their private information, and even going so far as to harass family members and friends of those they deem “enemies” of the state.
This tool has furthermore been used to silence political opponents and journalists who have been calling out the violence of the Duterte administration. For instance, in 2018, journalist and executive editor of Rappler, an online Filipino news source, Maria Ressa was arrested for fabricated charges of “cyber-libel” due to an article she wrote in opposition to the Duterte administration. Two years later, Maria Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”
The practice of red-tagging emulates the cold war tactics of red scare hysteria employed by the U.S. to discredit and denounce critics of the government as communists and terrorists. As soon as group members, individuals or journalists become red-tagged, these people are mysteriously disappeared, often arrested on fabricated charges.
The war on drugs
For people that the government suspects to be drug users, the nature of their disappearances are even more extreme: Often, these individuals are shot dead in the street, at their workplaces, and even in their own homes. These killings are then justified through the planting of incriminating evidence of firearms and methamphetamines, thus enabling militarized police to execute individuals without due process. According to a report published in 2020 by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, there have been at least 8,663 extrajudicial killings since Duterte entered office, but officials speculate that unreported killings “put the real toll at more than triple that number.”
Although historically there is no particular administration that is innocent of human rights violations (see: the U.S. as the number one abuser of human rights violations), “the rate and the scale [of killings in the Philippines under Duterte's totalitarian-style rule] is incomparable,” stated Commission on Human Rights spokesperson Jacqueline de Guia.
U.S. imperialism in the Philippines
The injustices of the Duterte administration, which has carried out over 30,000 extrajudicial killings in its drug war, must be understood as a consequence of the United State’s campaign to globally expand democracy and neoliberalism. The USAmerican definition of “democracy” is the marriage of a political worldview which (mis)represents the interests of the people, coupled with free-market global capitalism in which government leaders and corporations control the world’s resources.
Much of the abuse and state-sanctioned violence carried out by the Philippine military and state police is funded directly by the U.S. In case you weren’t aware, the U.S. federal government devotes a significant amount of taxpayer dollars to military spending both domestically and internationally. Having spent $778 billion on military funding and national defense in fiscal year 2020, the U.S. leads the pack in the highest military spending worldwide.
In the past five years, the U.S. has provided aid to the Philippines exceeding $700 million, not even including arms deals, all of which are funneled into the Philippine military and police. In 2020 alone, the U.S. provided at least 22 million dollars to the Philippines for covid relief, under the guise of supporting hospitals, personal protective equipment (PPE), and the country’s overall development. However, almost all of this has gone directly toward military expansion rather than to supporting the Filipino people. With an average of 64.1% of Filipino households facing food insecurity, this misuse of finances cannot be ignored.
Both the United States and the Philippines pride themselves as being champions of democratic rights, but the practices of silencing members of the press and activists make it clear that these homogenous governments care more about maintaining authoritarian military rule than in providing necessary social services to support the people. Instead of providing livelihood assistance and pandemic relief to workers in the U.S. and in the Philippines, both the U.S. government and the Philippine government spent millions of dollars on maintaining law and order — whatever that means.
Pass the Philippine Human Rights Act!
Representative Susan Wild (PA) introduced the Philippine Human Rights Act (PHRA) in September 2020, a bill that would suspend the funding being sent from the U.S. to aid the military and police of the Philippines. In order for this legislation to be put into action, it is necessary for other congress members to co-sponsor the PHRA. We must demand that our legislators champion the PHRA.
In order to contact your state legislators, you can use this handy advocacy toolkit which includes links you can use to send letters and scripts for voicing support for the PHRA.
Wakasan na! End Duterte’s reign of terror!
Join the movement to end the Duterte regime and fight for liberation for the Filipino people.
