DAVAO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 10, 2011) – Thousands of Filipino human rights advocates marched on Saturday in Davao City in the southern Philippines to celebrate the International Human Rights Day.
Militant organizations led by Bagong Alyansang Makabayan and human rights group called Karapatan blamed the Aquino government for the sad state of human rights in the country.
“The current human rights condition of the people of Davao only proved that the Aquino administration’s slogans of peace, human rights and justice are empty play of words. Its military policy Oplan Bayanihan, is just as vicious and anti people as the Oplan Bantay Laya of Arroyo,” said Hanimay Suazo, of Karapatan.
Karapatan-Southern Mindanao’s year-end report depicted the various cases of rights violations in the region. The group described the whole region as like “a garrison under the state of military rule, a hamleted land.”
“Human rights violations are done by the agents of the government. It is outrageous to see that the supposed enforcers and protectors of the law are the prime violators of human rights. This is far from the peace and development mouthed and publicized by the government,” she added.
Oplan Bayanihan is the codename for the government anti-insurgency campaign.
“To date, the region is deployed with 19 batallions of AFP troops. With paramilitary and vigilante groups, the number of security forces here would reach 10,000. This inevitably resulted to massive violations of human rights. 263 cases of human rights violations has already victimized 10, 429 individuals.”
“While the people are enduring the extreme poverty and worsening hunger, despite the Conditional-Cash Transfer poverty alleviation program of Aquino, the people are being harassed or killed. Oplan Bayanihan continues the impunity against human rights defenders and advocacy activists,” Suazo said.
She slammed Aquino’s claim of being an icon of democracy saying, “it is a big joke, the Aquino administration is a mockery of democracy.”
Franchie Buhayan, of Bayan, said the Aquino administration is gearing for more militarist attacks amidst the peoples’ growing vigilance especially with the prevalence of hunger, unemployment, landlessness and other economic woes that push people to fight.
“The most obvious human rights violations of this government is economic abuse characterized by demolitions, hunger and lack of social services.There is no other way but to fight this system that has bred grave injustice against the peoples’ fundamental rights. Let our strength be our weapons to fight the system of oppression and exploitation,” she said.
Bishop Modesto Villasanta, of the Exodus for Justice and Peace, whose also held a human right march in Davao City, said: “Violence and terror haunt every one of us in these dark days when the essence of human rights is undermined by the drive for power and money by the government and corporations. Violence and social injustice mars this so called democracy we live in. When there is no food on the table, when the youth cannot go to school, when the farmers have no land to till, when the workers’ sweat and blood is used as capital for the profit of some. This kind of social injustice and violence is what we must break free from.”
He said the rally dramatized the fundamental rights of people across sectors, age and social class and the state’s impunity against those fighting for these rights. “Widows and orphans of victims of extrajudicial killings poured their grievances out on the long denied and deprived justice over the deaths of their loved ones,” he said.
20