A Catholic bishop expressed fear that more suspected drug pushers and users would be killed—and that most of the victims are likely to be poor—as the government steps up the war against illegal drugs, which has already claimed over 5,000 lives.
Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo said stopping the drug trade by killing people “will not resolve the problem,” and stressed that thousands of lives had been lost to the state’s war against drugs just few months into Duterte’s term “and yet, illegal drugs continue to flourish.”
With the world celebrating International Human Rights Day yesterday, party-list lawmakers chimed in with Pabillo’s call in separate events.
Rep. Antonio Tinio and Rep. France Castro of the ACT Teachers Party-List joined teachers, Lakbayanis from Visayas, and others in a Peace Forum at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and the immersion in the Kampuhan of the Lakbayanis in PUP.
The contingent made a caravan from PUP to Philippine Normal University, Liwasang Bonifacio, and then to Mendiola to call for action on pressing human rights issues.
Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate also used the occasion to urge President Rodrigo Duterte to “reject the advice of the hawkish elements” in his administration and instead “listen to voices of reason and compassion” in his Cabinet.
Zarate said that of late, Duterte’s “pro-people pronouncements are slowly being overshadowed by numerous incidents pointing to the disregard of human rights.”
“The drug trade continues to thrive,” Bishop Pabillo said, “despite the bloody campaign. Those who suffer are mostly helpless and poor people.”
“The culture of death in the country is creeping,” the prelate added.
He said that the House Committee on Justice approved the reimposition of the death penalty and this “would only allow more to suffer from death.”
A Catholic priest, Fr. Ranhilio Aquino-Callangan, expressed his opposition to the restoration of capital punishment in a Facebook post on December 2.
“There is a fundamental reason that the death penalty should not be imposed… No fact-finding proceeding is ever infallible, and when you punish with death you must be infallible,” Aquino-Callangan said.
The incidents Zarate cited as examples are the “revisionist rehabilitation of a grave human rights violator like the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his sneaky burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, (and) the threat of suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.
He also mentioned “the still increasing militarization of the countryside like in Masbate, Bulacan and Mindanao, the appointment of Gen. Eduardo Año as the AFP chief of staff, the push for the reimposition of the death penalty and the backtracking in the release of political prisoners.”
“I hope that President Duterte would listen more to his Cabinet members and advisers that are more attuned to the real interest of the masses and shun those who represent the interests of the oligarchs and the militarists,” Zarate said.
“Rightist policies, as in the past, will only isolate the government from most Filipino people,” he added, urging the President to “reverse this alarming trend.”
The ACT lawmakers echoed Zarate, calling on the government “to respect the basic human rights of the people, including the demand of government employees—the bulk of whom are public school teachers—for decent salaries.”
“We urge the President to consider the present dire economic conditions of our teachers whose take-home pay is insufficient to meet the daily needs of their families,” Tinio and Castro said. “They end up taking out loans from Government Service Insurance System, banks, and worse, private lenders who bleed them out with usurious loans.”
The lawmakers also demanded for the immediate release of more than 400 political prisoners, including teachers and teacher-organizers Amelia Pond and Dominciano Muya of Davao, Rhea Pareja of Quezon, Rene Boy Abiva, an organizer for the Cagayan Valley chapter of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT).
“They were arrested and detained as criminals but the only acts they are guilty of are serving the poor and marginalized, and arousing, organizing, and mobilizing them to struggle for their basic human rights,” Castro said.