Mabuhay! The Ugnayang Pilipino sa Belgium extends its warmest greetings to each and every OFW in this International Day for Human Rights. May your efforts to work and sustain the needs of family be fruitful despite the threatening condition of human rights violations in our country.
Seventy-two years had passed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but it is sad to note that back home in the Philippines, derogation of human rights sustain amidst soaring unemployment, poor wages and benefits via contractualization, casualization and other forms of flexible labor policies. While OFWs like us sacrifice in distance from our loved ones, many fellows lost their jobs due to the pandemic, our poor jeepney drivers are systematically deprived of routes justifying jeepney phase-outs, peasants and fisherfolks are driven out of the land and coastal fishing waters due to massive land conversion and reclassification either for industrial zones, foreign mining corporations or tourist attractions.
The Duterte regime sustains already four years of bloody and massive manslaughter without due process or rule of law, no respect for human rights, no respect for international law, no desire for peace, no plan for public healthcare, no plan for democracy or any means to rectify undemocratic measures. Impunity reigns in its might.
This year, instead of strengthening human rights protection amid a global health crisis, Philippine government was only hell bent to sustain its murder policy. Duterte regime securitized and capitalized on the pandemic as it peddled an emergency power, used up billions of financial resources, and deployed armed state forces to aggravate attacks in communities and political opponents. Instead of a scientific, human and health-driven response to COVID-19, Duterte used the pandemic as pretext to sustain the killings and push for more war mongering in the communities being the regime’s top political agenda. The pandemic saw the Anti-Terror Law as the regime’s greater tool to stifle legitimate protests and critics. Hence, the atmosphere of warfare as Duterte criminalized dissent rather than facilitate solidarity and fellowship among Filipino community-folks.
The supposed centrality of the Declaration of Human Rights in governance, is actually nowhere in the programs of Philippine government. The state priority is not the welfare and future of our families, our children or our brothers and sisters at home! We are paying enormous amounts of taxes that the regime feed for its parasitic standing army, standing police and para-military forces who regularly slaughter our kababayans!
It is time to stand and unite.
Uphold human rights!
Stop impunity!
Stop the Killings in the Philippines!