Reject Authoritarian Rule, Defend People’s Democratic and Human Rights

Seven decades ago at the end of World War Two humankind has asserted that the destruction of human dignity in order to achieve power over populations through violence and fear would no longer reign in the world. Thus the United Nations on December 10, 1948 agreed on a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which would set the standard by which all nations strive to achieve for each of their citizens.

70 years on, the UDHR remain more relevant than ever as the world is now faced with an alarming rise in rightist and populist governments in many countries. Specifically in the Philippines, which has been under the Duterte presidency for more than two years, the respect for life and human dignity had been atrociously violated a thousand times over.

President Duterte has laid the groundwork for wholesale abuse of power by making the war on drugs his centrepiece program. His version of a “strong-state”, is dotted with “kill bills” i.e. lowering the age of criminal responsibility, death penalty and repressive legislation like the National ID System, review of the Anti-Wiretapping Law, SIM Card Registration and granting of subpoena powers to the PNP and the CIDG (RA 10973).

Duterte has made no secret his admiration for the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and strives to emulate his tyrannical rule: He has militarized the civilian bureaucracy by appointing retired soldiers or policemen and has increased the intelligence budget exponentially. He has been aggressively revising the Philippine history of martial law when he supported the burial of the late dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The late dictator Marcos’ defence minister Juan Ponce Enrile even publicly denied there were human rights violations that occurred during Martial Law despite its victims winning compensation for torture, enforced disappearances, summary executions, illegal detentions, under a Compensation Law which legally recognizes this historical fact.

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