Press Release
June 30, 2022

“Today’s inauguration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as president of the Philippines, and the diplomatic congratulations of some heads of states cannot mask the deeply flawed recent election process and the premonitions of deeper crisis for the Filipino people,” said Peter Murphy, Chairperson of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) today.

“Marcos Jr. is the dictator’s son who lived luxuriously while the Filipino people languished in poverty and repression back then. He has expressed zero remorse for the horrors of martial law but rather has spent millions to try to erase that record through paid dis- and misinformation. It is Marcos Jr. who has been co-sponsored into the presidency by the outgoing Duterte who has surpassed the crimes of Marcos Sr. and sanitized his image,” said Mr. Murphy.

The International Observer Mission, which was sponsored by ICHRP, Kontra Daya, and the United Church of Christ of the Philippines, involved over 60 international observers from 11 countries. Their Final Report has exposed the massive electoral failure: entertaining the populace with scantily clad girls, mis- and disinformation via paid vlogs, social media posts, and education modules, unprecedented scale of vote buying, paid rallyists, failure of Vote Counting Machines, misuse of SD cards from these machines, high speed announcement of results, and the life-threatening surveillance, red-tagging, arrests and harassment of opposition candidates and campaign workers, media repression, militarization, and extra-judicial killings. This ‘triumph’ of a coalition of notorious political dynasties cannot be afforded any legitimacy.

“What we in the international community in solidarity with the suffering Filipino people want to see, hear and feel is Marcos Jr. make a sincere public apology and serve justice to all Martial Law victims and survivors. We want him to announce a specific plan of action to uphold, protect, and advance the Filipino people’s socio-economic, political and cultural rights,” said Mr. Murphy. “He had three long decades and unquantifiable wealth to rectify his family’s crimes and to prepare for his gubernatorial, senatorial, vice presidential and presidential campaigns, but the people are still waiting to hear anything substantial.”

ICHRP is not reassured by the designation of freedom parks for rallyists and police being ordered to exercise maximum tolerance. “Having visited areas with armed forces and checkpoints, we know that what the 18,000 security personnel and the unknown number of checkpoints can do to hinder people’s mobility and participation in the people’s movement’s protest action. What the people want is for the government to listen to and heed their needs and demands, for only they know and hold the key to end poverty,” said Mr. Murphy. 

“ICHRP urges the international community to heighten its monitoring of the human rights situation in the Philippines, and to boost the energy in the available accountability mechanisms – the International Criminal Court, the findings of the UN Special Rapporteurs, the use of the recent Magnitsky laws against notorious individual violators of human rights, immediate reviews of European Union and US trade preferences for the Philippines, and an urgent review of weapons and training support to the Philippine army and police who are responsible for thousands of extrajudicial killings”, concluded Peter Murphy. 

For further comment: Peter Murphy +61 418 312 301

Press Release
June 27, 2022

“The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) strenuously condemns the Duterte administration’s order in its dying days to block 27 critical websites in an effort to lock the incoming Marcos-Duterte administration into ever harsher repression of civilian dissent,” said Peter Murphy, chairperson of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP).

On June 6, 2022, the President’s National Security Council (NSC), on the advice of outgoing National Security Advisor Hermogenes Esperon Jr., called on the National Telecommunications Commission to shut down the sites because they were “found to be affiliated to and are supporting terrorists and terrorist organizations”. On June 8, the NTC dutifully imposed the blocking orders. The NSC is an executive body acting outside any judicial process, and is simply denouncing individuals and organizations as “terrorist” without any evidence being tested.

“Duterte’s suppression of internet communication is a violation of the civil and political rights of the people to freedom of speech and communication,” said Murphy. “This kind of repression is now routinely applied in China, India and Iran, and the international community needs to sharply criticise all these governments.”

Continuing its crude red tagging of legal civilian organizations, the NSC declared that the websites of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) were in the same category as the websites of the religious organisation the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, the broad network supporting Lumad schools in Mindanao – Save Our schools, the longstanding legal organization of peasant women AMIHAN, the agricultural workers union UMA, the huge multi-sectoral alliance of legal organizations BAYAN, the legal fisherfolk organization PAMALAKAYA, and a string of Filipino news sites that report peasant and worker news – Pinoy Weekly, Bulatalat (listed twice!), Taga-Ilog News, Partisa-News, Peoples Resist News, and Arkibong Bayan, an online photographic archive of legal protest actions.

And the ban even extended to non-Filipino leftist sites which perhaps the National Telecommunications Commission cannot block – the International Action Center in the USA, Counter Punch in the USA, Monthly Review in the USA, and the International League of Peoples Struggles, whose site is hosted outside the Philippines.

“ICHRP condemns this order to block the websites of the underground revolutionary movement and the legal groups critical of its anti-people policies as a calculated move against any possibility of renewed peace talks between the incoming Marcos Jr. administration and the NDFP,” said Murphy.

“Renewing the peace talks is the best way to reduce the high levels of political violence in the Philippines, and to grapple with the key social conflicts underlying this violence – land reform, strengthening national economic capacity and democratic reform,” he said.

ICHRP and the international community, through the June 2020 Report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and three reports of Investigate PH in 2021, knows that Duterte is a massive violator of human rights. Democratic institutions in the Philippines and around the world have slammed him for his heinous crimes against humanity in the guise of the “war on drugs” and “war on terrorism”. It is estimated that over 30,000 unarmed civilians have been killed in police and military operations in the last six years.

“No amount of misinformation, disinformation, historical distortion, fake news, and distasteful language can cover that up what Duterte has done and stop the people from exposing the truth,” Murphy said. 

“Now that Rodrigo Duterte is set to leave office and lose his immunity, he wants to hide the economic horrors and the continuing brutality towards the poor which reveal the true Duterte legacy: that he and his cronies only enriched themselves at the expense of the people,” said Murphy.

“One big lesson from our longstanding partnerships with Filipino organizations and this year’s Philippine Election 2022 International Observer Mission is that the Filipino people have suffered throughout the Duterte administration, have no confidence in the incoming administration, deeply distrust the political system, and are determined to fight for their rights. 

“We in the international community understand that no matter the Filipino people’s patience and resilience, they have their limits. And the greater the repression, the greater the resistance. The banning of these 27 websites will not do Sara Duterte and Marcos Jr. any good, so we urge the incoming administration to not anger the people any further, to withdraw this latest oppressive action,” Murphy said. 

“We urge the incoming President to direct his officials to address the daily woes and the deep-seated roots of public dissent: he should support genuine agrarian reform, subsidize agriculture to feed the country, and scrap the oil deregulation law and oil taxes to ease the transport and commuter/worker sector’s daily burden,” he said.

“We know that the progressive people’s organizations who are now being attacked are asserting proposals to solve problem and are ready to cooperate as long as the people’s welfare are genuinely prioritized and addressed,” Murphy concluded.

Further comment: Peter Murphy +61 418 312 301

Note: this statement was originally published May 6, 2022

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines condemns a police red tagging and harassment attack against a human rights advocate on April 10 in Manila. The primary target of this harassment was Joe Iosbaker, an American Human Rights volunteer from Chicago, who arrived in Manila on April 3.

In the afternoon of April 10 three tarpaulins (large vinyl banners) were found in front of the hotel in Quezon City where Joe Iosbaker was staying. More of the same banners hung at a nearby human rights office housed in the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) building. The tarpaulins contained the name and a picture of Iosbaker and the text said:

• “Ally of Communist Terrorist Group” 
• “Don’t meddle with PH affairs. You’re not welcome here!”
• “You’re not welcome here in our country. Get out!”

The hotel security guards reported that the CIDG (Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, a branch of the Philippine National Police) had hung the tarpaulins. At that point, concerned for his personal security, Iosbaker transferred hotels and his things were collected later.

Further, at 8.30am that day a small protest group gathered in front of National Council of Churches of the Philippines Building. There was a speaker, they were holding placards and were hiding their faces behind the placards. Written on the placards were – ‘banyagang terorista, alyado ng komunista, layas!” (Foreign terrorist ally of Communists, Out!).

Iosbaker appears to have come to the attention of the CIDG during an April 9 meeting with a partylist candidate, Ms Amirah Lidasan, at a coffee shop in Manila. Lidasan is the third nominee for Bayan Muna (People First) Partylist in the May 9 National Elections. Sadly, it is typical of Filipino politics that a person like Ms Lidasan is considered a national security threat and is placed under such intense surveillance for advocating democratic change.

The CIDG office is in the same building as the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), not far from Iosbaker’s hotel. The CIDG is described as the primary investigation arm of the Philippine National Police yet their function appears to involve black ops against human rights defenders.

These vinyl banners are a standard form of red tagging in the Philippines, deployed against unarmed civilians by the NTF-ELCAC, to intimidate these civilians into silence and implicitly threaten violent attack. Many people whose images appear on these banners also receive threatening text messages and many have been assassinated. But it is rare for a non-Filipino to be threatened in this way.

Clearly a significant amount of police resources was dedicated to the identification of Joe Iosbaker, the production of materials for the public vilification campaign, and the orchestration of a protest action at the NCCP Office.

ICHRP strongly protests at the red tagging of this non-Filipino human rights advocate and the associated threat of violence against him, and the intense surveillance of Ms Lidasan. ICHRP calls on the Philippine authorities, including the Commission on Human Rights, to investigate this incident and to take action against those responsible. The Philippine government owes Mr. Iosbaker a sincere apology. ICHRP calls on the U.S. government to formally protest to the Philippine government over this incident.

Further comment: Peter Murphy +61 418 312 301 chairperson@ichrp.net