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Friday, March 29, 2024

‘Children don’t need rhetoric of death’

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PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte should spare Filipino children his language of death and violence, according to Senator Risa Hontiveros.

The minority bloc lawmaker said it was one thing to claim to protect them, and quite another to ask them to embrace a culture of violence and conceal it as protection. 

“The rhetoric of death and violence is an education our children don’t need. President Duterte’s love of violence contradicts the very principles espoused by the Boy Scouts of the Philippines,” said Hontiveros.

She was giving reference to the group which, by law, recently made him the chief scout, being the President.

“One of its [Boy Scouts] core programs is the Messengers of peace initiative. It is anchored on training and dialogue, capacity building and peace projects,” said Hontiveros.

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She said the President could not teach Filipino children “peace and progress through a parade of dead bodies. Mister President, do not brainwash our children. Leave our kids alone.”

The President should stop using the “protection of children” to legitimize his bloody war on drugs. 

The awful truth, according to her, was that Filipino children themselves have become victims of this drug war. 

She said some  children, branded as “hardened criminals,” have died at the hands of extrajudicial killers. 

She said many have been orphaned; when the drug war killed the parents and guardians of many poor families, it also succeeded in sentencing orphaned children to a life of destitution and poverty.  

She added: “On top of that, all the children survivors of this abusive drug war would need mental health care, whose importance this government refuses to recognize. 

“Without proper intervention, an entire generation of Filipinos will grow up scarred and traumatized, their sense of justice perverted by the President’s obsession with killings.”

She said Duterte’s appalling remarks before an audience of children insulted the victim’s families and the memory of those they lost to violence. 

She said: “Violence will consign them to a dark and bleak future where the silence of the dead and terrified is mistaken for peace. 

“The real protection of children lies in a government that is able to take care of all its citizens, adheres to democratic values and values the dignity of human life.”

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