Press Statement
November 8, 2024

Donald Trump’s election triumph means that US policy will be volatile in style. But for sure, there will be many continuities of the Biden regime’s policy with regards to its relations with the Philippine government, a policy focused on increasing US military presence and economic influence in the Philippines. Both the previous Trump and Biden administrations supported and blessed Philippine Presidents Duterte and Marcos Jr., both of whom were found guilty of war crimes during the 2024 International People’s Tribunal. 

At this moment of change from Biden to Trump, ICHRP renews our call for an end to the US-led counterinsurgency campaign in the Philippines, and a stop to its widespread indiscriminate bombing and artillery strikes in the countryside. ICHRP calls for the respect of agreements made in peace talks between the government of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), including the accord on the respect for human rights and international humanitarian law. It is essential to address the root causes of the social conflict to bring the armed conflict to a just end.

“ICHRP challenges the incoming Trump team to condemn the 105 cases of extrajudicial killings, 12 cases of enforced disappearances, and 28 cases of torture reported by the Karapatan human rights alliance under the 24 months of the Marcos Jr. administration up to June 30, 2024,” said Peter Murphy, ICHRP Chairperson. “We call for the release of the 755 political prisoners now held by Marcos Jr,” he added

“Given the strident anti-people stance of Trump, ICHRP urges all its member organizations and the wider international community to brace for a sharper and more fast-moving campaign to uphold the basic rights of the Filipino people,” Murphy said.

The key interest of both US administrations was the utility of the Philippines as the biggest base in the ‘first island chain’ for containing China’s political and military influence. As long as the Manila government remains a reliable ally against China, the US continues to turn a blind eye to the dire human rights and democracy situation.

There is the US rhetoric about a “free and prosperous Indo-Pacific”, and then there is the stark reality of the misery of landlessness and poverty, and the lawlessness suffered by the Filipino people.

“ICHRP predicts that Trump will extend his bromance from Duterte to Marcos Jr. But we also predict that Trump’s global disdain for human rights and institutions will worsen the agony of the Filipino people,” said Murphy.

“Filipino plaintiffs managed to convince the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Duterte administration for the crime against humanity of murder, in relation to its anti-drug operations. The US has never signed up to the ICC, but Trump in particular is militantly opposed to its operation,” said Murphy. The same applies to his attitude to the United Nations Human Rights Council and the UN system in general.

“These international institutions, based on treaties between nations, are one expression of the international community’s desire for human rights. Those like Duterte and Trump who directly undermine these institutions make the work of all human rights advocates harder. This will be felt in the Philippines and the freedom loving Filipino people will surely stand and defend their inherent right,” concluded Murphy.

Statement
November 5, 2024

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) denounces the non-respect of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) to their ongoing peace process with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). The recent series of arrests of NDFP peace consultants Simeon Naogsan, Porferio Tuna, and Wigberto Villarico by  the Marcos Jr. government is part of their longstanding campaign to undermine the peace process with the NDFP. We call for their immediate release.

The three peace consultants are holders of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), an agreement between the GRP and the NDFP. They have a long track record of working alongside impoverished and militarized rural communities on the struggle and program for genuine land reform. 

“The arbitrary arrests and detentions of these consultants are blatant violations by the GRP of the JASIG, signed to assure the safety and immunity of those involved in the peace process against threat, harassment, arrest, detention, or killing. Such attacks on peace consultants further exemplify the Marcos Jr. regime’s insincerity to resolve the root causes of the armed conflict to attain just and lasting peace,” said ICHRP Chairperson Peter Murphy. 

“The Philippine government’s long history of targeting NDFP peace consultants demonstrates its deceitfulness in pursuing just peace. Resolving the roots of the armed conflict in the country includes addressing the issue of landlessness for the majority. NDFP peace consultants are entrenched with the rural poor in the militarized countryside, working with peasants, farm workers, fisherfolk, and indigenous peoples on grassroots campaigns against land-grabbing by big foreign corporations and big landlords,” Murphy stated.

At least 14 peace consultants have been murdered by the Philippine government since it withdrew from peace talks with the NDFP in 2017. These violations of International Humanitarian Law continue to occur under the Marcos Jr. regime. This past September 11, 2024, another NDFP Consultant, Ariel Arbitrario, was killed in the northern Philippines while in the custody of the 502nd Brigade, 5th Infantry Division of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). He was captured and reportedly subjected to torture. These are clear violations of International Humanitarian Law.

Another NDFP peace consultant, Rogelio Posadas, was arrested and summarily executed by state agents on April 20, 2023. The killing of Posadas came just days after the announcement of the deaths of Benito and Wilma Tiamzon, NDFP negotiating panel member and consultant. They were reportedly captured with eight others in August 2022, tortured, killed, and their bodies placed in a boat which was later blown up by the military.

Other recent victims in the killing spree against peace consultants rendered hors de combat by the AFP include Ericson Acosta, poet, songwriter, and cultural worker; and peasant organizer Joseph Jimenez, both arrested and then executed in Negros Occidental, on November 30, 2022. Pedro Codaste was abducted on January 19, 2022, in Bukidnon, Mindanao, and falsely declared killed in an encounter. “These cases of abduction, torture and execution by the AFP represent clear violations of International Humanitarian Law. These incidents are another affirmation of the verdict of the International People’s Tribunal 2024, which found the US government, and the Marcos Jr. and Duterte regimes, guilty of war crimes,” said Murphy. 

Peasants all over the country continue to struggle under intense poverty and landlessness while the Marcos Jr. regime neglects the implementation of genuine agrarian reform and opens up the Philippines to more investment that favors foreign profit. Indigenous peoples suffer intense military pressure to give up control of their remaining ancestral domains to logging, mining and plantation corporations. Food prices continue to increase while living wages remain paltry. Instead of addressing these problems, the Marcos Jr. regime commits widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including red-tagging, bombing, strafing, military encampment, and various forms of threats and harassment against poor activists and human rights defenders. This militarist approach attempts to vilify dissent while doing nothing to develop a substantial response to the social and economic problems of the Filipino people. 

“ICHRP remains deeply concerned about the intensifying level of oppression and repression. The Marcos Jr. government seems to be more interested in creating roadblocks than  negotiating for a peaceful resolution to the civil war. The Filipino people are also determined to pursue their cause and exercise their right to self determination. As such, the armed conflict will continue to persist.

“We want to let President Marcos Jr. know that the international community is concerned about the ongoing state of terror in the Philippines. We will continue to expose the blatant violation of human rights and international humanitarian law by the Philippine government as we expand our support for the demands of peasants, workers, and other oppressed people in the Philippines,” concluded Murphy. 

ICHRP calls on the Marcos government to:

• Stop the attacks on peace consultants and end all violations of International Humanitarian Law. Uphold human rights and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Additional Protocols of 1977.
• Address the urgent concerns of the Filipino people and the root causes of the armed conflict. Implement Genuine Land Reform!
• Rejoin the International Criminal Court and allow it to conduct investigations in the Philippines related to the alleged crime against humanity of murder and other violations of International Humanitarian Law by the Duterte government.
• Respect all previously signed peace agreements between the GRP and the NDFP.  
• Release the 791 political prisoners who remain in detention.

Further comment: Peter Murphy, ICHRP Chairperson, +61418312301
media@ichrp.net

PRESS RELEASE
November 1, 2024

PH gov’t role as a serial human rights violator, perpetrator of state terrorism once again exposed in legislative hearings into drug war

After years of investigation and mountains of evidence by the International Peoples Tribunals, Investigate PH, the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council, Philippine elected officials through the House of Representatives Quad Committee are finally taking first steps toward acknowledging the depth and breadth of the crimes committed by the Duterte Regime. – Peter Murphy, ICHRP Chairperson

ICHRP recognizes the important role of the House Quad Committee on its first steps in the process of investigating the crimes against humanity perpetrated by state forces in the so-called war on drugs, which is an ongoing war on the poor. The work of the House Quad Committee adds to the existing mountain of evidence of the culpability of the Duterte Regime as a serial violator of basic human rights and international humanitarian law. 

Duterte’s recent testimony before the Senate, boasting of extensive rights violations and command culpability for the deaths of tens of thousands of victims, further incriminates him and his murderous regime. “Duterte must be held accountable for gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. He must be indicted, tried and jailed for his crimes in the so-called drug war and his dirty war against political dissent. This is the only way to achieve justice and accountability for the victims and their families,” said Murphy. 

For tens of thousands of families who suffered under the bloody “war on drugs”, the killing of political activists, and the killing of New People’s Army (NPA) prisoners and wounded-in-action, justice demands both accountability and transparency from the highest offices of the state. “ICHRP calls on the Marcos Jr. government to authorize full access to evidence and testimonies revealed in the House Quad Committee’s ongoing investigation,” said Murphy.

The shocking revelations of the Quad Committee hearings have spurred on the Duterte Panagutin Network, and ICHRP vigorously supports their call for Duterte to “take responsibility and for the Marcos regime to push accountability and seek justice for the victims ”.

To fully understand the breadth of state complicity in the War on the Poor and the War on Dissent, ICHRP encourages the Quad Committee to investigate not only the role of the police and military in these rights violations but the judicial system’s role and complicity in the institutionalization of impunity, the failure of domestic remedies, and the weaponization of the law to violate rights of the Filipino people. The 1 July 2016 Command Memo of Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa created Project Double Barrel and its component, Project Tokhang, ordering police to conduct “house-to-house visitations” of “suspected drug personalities.” Warrants were not required, and individuals had no legal recourse to challenge their inclusion on target lists. There was no due process further enhancing the climate of impunity. Tens of thousands were killed, and police killers had quotas and were rewarded for each killing.

The July 2020 Anti-Terrorism Act normalised the executive denunciation of civilian political critics as “terrorists”, a process already running at high speed through the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), created by Durterte’s Executive Order 70 in December 2018. During Duterte’s presidency, these political repression campaigns caused 422 cases of extrajudicial killing of civilian political activists, and from July 2022 to June 2024, 105 such cases under President Marcos Jr. Those killed were peasant and union organizers, Indigenous Peoples’ leaders, lawyers, journalists and church leaders. This war on dissent severely curtailed democratic space.

Given the revelations so far, the Marcos Jr. administration must restore Philippine membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and cooperate fully with international investigative bodies. Victims’ families and the Filipino people have waited too long for justice. President Marcos Jr.’s administration must take concrete actions to address this legacy of abuse and impunity, and prevent future violations.

We call for the Philippines to rejoin the International Criminal Court!
We call for the Quad Committee to release all evidence to the ICC.
We call for an end to the “war on drugs” – war on the poor.
We call for an end to extra judicial killings, the war on dissent and all associated military operations!
We call for an end to the weaponization of the courts and an end to impunity.
We call for justice for the victims of these crimes, prosecute the perpetrators! 

Contact: Peter Murphy +61 418 312 301