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Year: 2021

Gov’t snubs CHR in review of anti-drug war list of victims

KODAO Productions
January 11 2020

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) revealed it is being kept out of the review of the first partial report of the deaths resulting from the conduct of the Rodrigo Duterte government’s anti-illegal drug operations.

The CHR said the snub is contrary to the commitments and assurances of the government during the 44th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) last year.

“This is an unfulfilled promise to Filipinos and the entire community of nations,” CHR Commissioner Karen Gomez-Dumpit said in a statement Monday.

In his speech delivered online during the UNHRC’s 44th general session last June 30, Guevarra said the Duterte government established an inter-agency panel, chaired by his office, “that is quietly conducting a judicious review of the 5,655 anti-illegal drugs operations where deaths occurred.”

The members of the interagency panel are the Department of Justice, the Presidential Communications Operations Office, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Presidential Human Rights Committee Secretariat, the Presidential Management Staff, the Dangerous Drugs Board, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, the Philippine National Police, and the National Bureau of Investigation, Guevarra later revealed.

The government assured the international community that the CHR would play a role in the panel.

“As with all human rights-related mechanisms in the country, the Commission on Human Rights would be involved in its capacity as an independent monitoring body,” it said.

But Dumpit said the CHR has not been involved despite “respectfully, diligently, consistently, and repeatedly asked the Department of Justice” concerning its role in the said panel, to no avail.

Nonetheless, Dumpit said the CHR strongly urges the Government to publicize the findings “as transparency is key to ensure the credibility of the said report.”

“This will allow victims and their families to access crucial information in the process of obtaining justice. We reiterate our openness and willingness to engage with the government in this process,” Dumpit said.

What the UNHRC said

In a 26-page report last June 4, the UNHRC said the Duterte government’s heavy-handed focus on countering national security threats and illegal drugs has resulted in serious human rights violations, including killings and arbitrary detentions, as well as the vilification of dissent.

The report also noted that the anti-drug killings range from “at least 8,663” to possibly triple the number.

In examining key policy documents of the Duterte government relating to its campaign against illegal drugs, the UNHRC found a troubling lack of due process, protections, and the use of language calling for “negation” and “neutralization” of drug suspects.

“Such ill-defined and ominous language, coupled with repeated verbal encouragement by the highest level of State officials to use lethal force, may have emboldened police to treat the circular as permission to kill,” the UNHRC report stated.

In a separate statement issued last June 26, various UN special rapporteurs said the UNHRC report confirmed their findings and warnings issued over the last four years: widespread and systematic killings and arbitrary detention in the context of the war on drugs, killings and abuses targeting farmers and indigenous peoples, the silencing of independent media, critics and the opposition.

“The reports also finds, as we had, stark and persistent impunity,” the UN experts said.

The experts highlighted “the staggering cost of the relentless and systematic assault on the most basic rights of Filipinos at the hands of the Government”:

Based on the most conservative assessment, since July 2016, 8,663 people have been killed in the war on drugs and 223,780 “drug personalities” arrested, with estimates of triple that number.

At least 73 children were killed during that period in the context of a campaign against illegal drugs. Concerns have also been raised about grave violations against children committed by State and non-State actors in the context of military operations, including the recruitment and use of children in combat or support.

The lasting economic harm and increased poverty among the children and other family members of those killed is likely to lead to further human rights violations.

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Discovering Human Dignity

Shay Cullen
9 January 2021

When I see the newly arrived children- all victims of human right violations and sexual abuse- healing and recovering in our Preda Foundation home and striving to be “good,” to be a “better person”, somehow thinking they are “bad,” I and the Preda staff continuously tell them in Filipino that:  “You are good children and youth. You have done no wrong, you are innocent victims of bad people who trafficked and abused you.”

It takes a long while for them to understand this. Then, the day arrives when they have had their fifth or sixth session of Emotional Release Therapy. That is where they dramatically confront their abusers in the padded therapy room and fight back at their rapist. They shout his name, cry and scream at him and pound the cushions as if beating him. They are tearing free from the fear and subjugation they endured.  In time, they have a new self-understanding.  It is an emotional resurrection, the greatest moment of liberation in their lifetime.

They come to realize that they are good persons and have been exploited and abused. Sandra, a 13-year-old, who was repeatedly raped and beaten by her biological father, told how she felt in a group session after her therapy, “I feel free from them, I can live on my own, I see now what is true, I have my dignity”.

The children have broken free from the culture of servility and domination and being downtrodden, and discovered the most important of all. They discovered they have that vital and all-important inherent value of all humanity- human dignity.  They have been brainwashed and told all their lives in the slums, living in poverty, without proper education, that they are of little worth, of no value and are better out earning money with their bodies. The younger ones are abused and threatened to tell no one of the sexual abuse. They are told that they did a bad thing and are made to feel guilty and dirty and are wrongly made ashamed of themselves. But from open emotional expression comes freedom and a sense of self-confidence and self-worth and empowerment from knowing that they have dignity and that their dignity has imbued them with inalienable rights. 

Human dignity is the greatest value in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It was neglected, ignored and lost for thousands of years. In fact, the word itself was lost until recent history. The idea, concept or belief in human dignity as an  ‘inherent or unearned worth of humans’ was not even used in any official or government document, researchers say, until it appeared by chance in the Mexican Constitution of 1917. Then, it was a vague reference to human value. The word only appeared in 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified by the United Nations. In the introduction, the word is used twice to justify why humans have inalienable rights. That humans have these rights is an idea, a concept, based on the belief that the human species has an ‘inherent or unearned worth of humans’ above all other creatures and species on the planet. 

Until the Universal Declaration of Human Rights came in to force in the membership nations that made up the United Nations, many countries without a fair and human rights-based legal system frequently treated people as disposable items by those in power and authority. That authority was absolute, unquestionable, and every person was at its mercy without respect or recourse.

The abominations, atrocities and genocide of World War II gave rise to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as humanity realized that without the recognition of the dignity of the human person, and their rights arising from it enforced in law and practice, they didn’t have a chance to survive the rise of fascist authoritarian regimes. 

The principles and the rights laid out by the Declaration has been universally accepted and recognized by most nations, on paper at least.  Many regimes ignore the rights and dignity of their citizens that must be treated with respect, equality, and human value as enshrined in the Declaration and to be enforced and implemented by Rule of Law. 

There is international action, condemnation and protest when the violations of human rights and human dignity are violated. Protests, demonstrations, marches, social media campaigns raise their voice to denounce the violations although much more has to be done. 

The imposition of UN sanctions and the deployment of peace-keeping troops and the indictments of the International Criminal Court of Justice are some ways the world community can bring an erring regime to accountability and yet the massacres, child sexual abuse, violations and trampling on human dignity and rights continue unabated. Just as corrupt politicians, criminal gangs, drug cartel leaders and mafia bosses are the killers and tramplers of human rights, so too are the many individuals who abuse children and their enablers and protectors. It is only in our generation in the last twenty years that there has been an outcry and movement to condemn child sexual abuse and human trafficking and enact strict laws to bring abusers to account and to jail.Tolerance, apathy, indifference, secret approval of child abuse was the custom and in many places it still is. In the Philippines, life sentences are frequently handed down to child sex abusers and human traffickers. The strict laws, driven through congress by civil society, are most important in doing justice for the victims of these heinous crimes against children. 

Let us not forget where human dignity, respect for human rights of children and women, were first announced and taught. It was by that inspired man, the prophetic Jesus of Nazareth, who constantly championed the rights of children and declared the child  as the most important in his planned society of justice, equality, dignity and peace. To accept and respect the child was to accept him. That is a strong endorsement of human dignity of the most vulnerable in society. 

www.preda.org

Jesuit will deliver invocation at Biden’s inauguration

The tradition of invocations at presidential inaugurations goes back to 1937

By Carol Zimmermann, Catholic News Service
January 9, 2021

Jesuit Father Leo O’Donovan speaking at the Dutch Embassy in Washington D.C. in 2017 (Photo: en.wikipedia.org)

Jesuit Father Leo O’Donovan, former president of Georgetown University, will deliver the invocation at the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden on Jan. 20.

The priest, a friend of the Biden family, was the main celebrant at the funeral Mass for Biden’s son Beau in 2015 at St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Wilmington, Delaware.

He confirmed with National Catholic Reporter Jan. 6 that he would be delivering the invocation, saying Biden had personally called him and invited him, which he accepted.

This year’s scaled-back public inauguration ceremony, due to the pandemic, will take place on the west side of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, a site taken over Jan. 6 by rioters contesting the certification of the 2020 presidential election. President Donald Trump announced on Jan. 8 that he would not attend the ceremony.

In leading the prayer of blessing, Father O’Donovan, who is currently director of mission for Jesuit Refugee Service, will follow the footsteps of his predecessor at Georgetown, Jesuit Father Timothy Healy, who offered a prayer during the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan in 1985.

The tradition of invocations at presidential inaugurations goes back to 1937 and Catholic leaders have been in this role for several presidents. The Southern Baptist minister, Rev. Billy Graham, offered this prayer for presidents Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

In 1961, when John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the first Catholic president, Boston Cardinal Richard J. Cushing delivered the invocation, which said in part: “Strengthen our resolve, oh Lord, to transform this recognition of others into a principle of cooperation. Inspire us to practice this principle of cooperation both in ideal and action in these most dangerous, but soul-stretching times.”

Four years later, Archbishop Robert E. Lucey of San Antonio gave the invocation at President Lyndon B. Johnson’s inauguration.

His prayer included a description of the time saying: “In these days of tragedy and crisis all that we hold dear is challenged — belief in God, respect for human responsibility, honor, integrity, and every freedom of the human spirit. All these are at stake and our country, champion of truth and justice, must lead the nations of the world to the dawn of a brighter hope.”

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Inflation highest in 21 months, NEDA warns of continuing increase

KODAO Productions
January 6, 2021

The country’s Inflation rate accelerated to 3.5% in December 2020, driven by the increase in the prices of food non-alcoholic beverages, transport, and restaurant and miscellaneous goods and services, the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) reported Tuesday.

The inflation rate last month is higher than the 3.3% in November 2020 and the 2.5% in December 2019.

Among the sub-groups, prices of vegetables and meat significantly increased from the previous month, traced to lower production following the damage caused by previous typhoons, the NEDA said.

The increase in the prices of meat inched up for the third consecutive month owing to the decline in domestic swine production due to the African Swine Fever (ASF), the agency added.

NEDA said that country’s average inflation rate for 2020 is at 2.6%, higher than the 2.5% the previous year but within the 2% to 4% target range of the government.

Acting socioeconomic planning secretary Karl Kendrick Chua blamed the coronavirus pandemic and the string of calamities that hit the country for the increase.

“The imminent threat of natural calamities every year highlights the need for long-term solutions such as infrastructure investments that would improve flood control, water management and irrigation systems, reforestation, climate-resilient production and processing facilities, among others,” Chua said.

Chua warned that the ongoing La Niña weather phenomenon may continue to adversely affect the economy.

Inflation hardest for the poor

Research group IBON noted that the December 2020 inflation rate is the highest inflation in 21 months, and even higher for the poorest 30% of Filipino households at 4.3%.

IBON said that even Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data show that the December inflation rate is the highest since March 2019.

“The prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages rose the fastest at 4.8% last month from 4.3% in November 2020. Inflation in health and transport was also higher at 2.6% and 8.3%, respectively,” IBON reported.

“The higher December 2020 inflation figures underscore the urgency of giving poor and low-income families additional emergency cash subsidies. The faster increase in prices is all the more burdensome due to record joblessness and decreasing incomes amid the pandemic lockdown,” the group said.

IBON blamedthe government’s continuing failure to contain the pandemic it said resulted in more unemployed Filipinos today than at any time in the country’s history. The group estimates unemployment in October 2020 at 5.8 million Filipinos — or two million more than the official 3.8 million count — or an unemployment rate of 12.7 percent. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)

Healing Rosary for the World at the Manila Cathedral

Please watch and share from the Manila Cathedral You Tube channel. Thank you.

In celebration of the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines, the Healing Rosary for the World is brought to us by the LIGHT OF FAITH featuring the world’s largest solar rosary by the A Liter of Light (Isang Litrong Liwanag). As one nation, let us come together and pray the rosary for healing, and bring the light of faith, 500 years and beyond! The Manila Cathedral, January 6, 2021, 9:00 PM.

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Holy Mass on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God

54th World Day Of Peace
Homily Of His Holiness Pope Francis

Vatican Basilica
Friday, 1st January 2021

In the readings of today’s Mass, three verbs find their fulfilment in the Mother of God: to bless, to be born and to find.

To bless.  In the Book of Numbers, the Lord tells his sacred ministers to bless his people: “Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them, ‘The Lord bless you’” (6:23-24).  This is no pious exhortation; it is a specific request.  And it is important that, today too, priests constantly bless the People of God and that the faithful themselves be bearers of blessing; that they bless.  The Lord knows how much we need to be blessed.  The first thing he did after creating the world was to say that everything was good (bene-dicere) and to say of us that that we were very good.  Now, however, with the Son of God we receive not only words of blessing, but the blessing itself: Jesus is himself the blessing of the Father.  In him, Saint Paul tells us, the Father blesses us “with every blessing” (Eph 1:3).  Every time we open our hearts to Jesus, God’s blessing enters our lives.

Today we celebrate the Son of God, who is “blessed” by nature, who comes to us through his Mother, “blessed” by grace.  In this way, Mary brings us God’s blessing.  Wherever she is, Jesus comes to us.  Therefore, we should welcome her like Saint Elizabeth who, immediately recognizing the blessing, cried out: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Lk 1:42).  We repeat those words every time we recite the Hail Mary.  In welcoming Mary, we receive a blessing, but we also learn to bless.  Our Lady teaches us that blessings are received in order to be given.  She, who was blessed, became a blessing for all those whom she met: for Elizabeth, for the newlyweds at Cana, for the Apostles in the Upper Room…  We too are called to bless, to “speak well” in God’s name.  Our world is gravely polluted by the way we “speak” and think “badly” of others, of society, of ourselves.  Speaking badly corrupts and decays, whereas blessing restores life and gives the strength needed to begin anew each day.  Let us ask the Mother of God for the grace to be joyful bearers of God’s blessing to others, as she is to us.

The second verb is to be born.  Saint Paul points out that the Son of God was “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4).  In these few words, he tells us something amazing: that the Lord was born like us.  He did not appear on the scene as an adult, but as a child.  He came into the world not on his own, but from a woman, after nine months in the womb of his Mother, from whom he allowed his humanity to be shaped.  The heart of the Lord began to beat within Mary; the God of life drew oxygen from her.  Ever since then, Mary has united us to God because in her God bound himself to our flesh, and he has never left it.  Saint Francis loved to say that Mary “made the Lord of Majesty our brother” (SAINT BONAVENTURE, Legenda Maior, 9, 3).  She is not only the bridge joining us to God; she is more.  She is the road that God travelled in order to reach us, and the road that we must travel in order to reach him.  Through Mary, we encounter God the way he wants us to: in tender love, in intimacy, in the flesh.  For Jesus is not an abstract idea; he is real and incarnate; he was “born of a woman”, and quietly grew.  Women know about this kind of quiet growth.  We men tend to be abstract and want things right away.  Women are concrete and know how to weave life’s threads with quiet patience.  How many women, how many mothers, thus give birth and rebirth to life, offering the world a future!

We are in this world not to die, but to give life.  The holy Mother of God teaches us that the first step in giving life to those around us is to cherish it within ourselves.  Today’s Gospel tells us that Mary “kept all these things in her heart” (cf. Lk 2:19).  And goodness comes from the heart.  How important it is to keep our hearts pure, to cultivate our interior life and to persevere in our prayer!  How important it is to educate our hearts to care, to cherish the persons and things around us.  Everything starts from this: from cherishing others, the world and creation.  What good is it to know many persons and things if we fail to cherish them?  This year, while we hope for new beginnings and new cures, let us not neglect care.  Together with a vaccine for our bodies, we need a vaccine for our hearts.  That vaccine is care.  This will be a good year if we take care of others, as Our Lady does with us.

The third verb is to find.  The Gospel tells us that the shepherds “found Mary and Joseph and the child” (v. 16).  They did not find miraculous and spectacular signs, but a simple family.  Yet there they truly found God, who is grandeur in littleness, strength in tenderness.  But how were the shepherds able to find this inconspicuous sign?  They were called by an angel.  We too would not have found God if we had not been called by grace.  We could never have imagined such a God, born of a woman, who revolutionizes history with tender love.  Yet by grace we did find him.  And we discovered that his forgiveness brings new birth, his consolation enkindles hope, his presence bestows irrepressible joy.  We found him but we must not lose sight of him.  Indeed, the Lord is never found once and for all: each day he has to be found anew.  The Gospel thus describes the shepherds as constantly on the lookout, constantly on the move: “they went with haste, they found, they made known, they returned, glorifying and praising God” (vv. 16-17.20).  They were not passive, because to receive grace we have to be active.

What about ourselves?  What are we called to find at the beginning of this year?  It would be good to find time for someone.  Time is a treasure that all of us possess, yet we guard it jealously, since we want to use it only for ourselves.  Let us ask for the grace to find time for God and for our neighbour – for those who are alone or suffering, for those who need someone to listen and show concern for them.  If we can find time to give, we will be amazed and filled with joy, like the shepherds.  May Our Lady, who brought God into the world of time, help us to be generous with our time.  Holy Mother of God, to you we consecrate this New Year.  You, who know how to cherish things in your heart, care for us, bless our time, and teach us to find time for God and for others.  With joy and confidence, we acclaim you: Holy Mother of God!  Amen.

© Copyright – Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Objectives and Initiatives of ‘Amoris Laetitia Family’ Year

Meeting-with-families-in-Santiago-de-Cuba-L’Osservatore-Eomano-

Explanations of the Organizing Dicastery

December 28, 2020 Anita Bourdin

The “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year (March 19, 2021- June 26, 2022) has five objectives, pointed out the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family, and Life on December 27, 2020. “To spread the Document’s content,” “to proclaim that the Sacrament of Marriage is a gift,” to render families actors of the family pastoral,” “to make young people conscious of the importance of formation to the truth of love and of the gift of oneself,” “to broaden the gaze and action of the family pastoral . . . so as to include spouses, children, young people, the elderly and situations of family fragility.”

Among the “initiatives” already planned, is a “day for grandparents and elderly people,” but also a Forum in June 2021, and ten videos of Pope Francis on the Document, testimonies of handicapped people, pastoral proposals, preparatory catecheses for Rome’s 10th World Meeting of Families in June 2022.

The Dicastery quotes first of all the Post-Synodal Document: “The Christian proclamation concerning the family is truly good news” (Amoris Laetitia, 1).

Opening and Closing

Pope Francis will open the “Amoris Laetitia Family” Year on March 19, 2021. On that day the Church will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia “on the beauty and the joy of family love.” He will close it on June 26, 2022, on the occasion of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome.

This is how the organizing Dicastery explains the “project.” The “Amoris Laetitia” Year is an initiative of Pope Francis, which intends to touch the world’s families through different proposals of a spiritual, pastoral and cultural nature, able to be implemented in parishes, dioceses, Universities, Ecclesial Movements, and family Associations.”

“The pandemic experience has made evident the central role of the family as domestic Church and the importance of community links between families, which make the Church a “family of families” (AL 87),” underscores the Dicastery.

This is why the family “merits a year of celebrations because it is placed at the center of the engagement and care of the whole pastoral and ecclesial reality.”

There are five objectives:

  1. To spread the content of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia,” to have people experience that the Gospel of the family is a joy that fills the heart and our whole life” (AL 200). A family that discovers and experiences the joy of having a gift and of being a gift to the Church and the society, “can become a light in the darkness of the world” (AL 66). And today the world is in need of that light!
  2. To proclaim that the Sacrament of Marriage is a gift and that it has in itself a transforming power of human love. To this end, it is necessary that Pastors and families walk together in pastoral co-responsibility and complementarity between the different vocations in the Church (cf. AL 203).
  3. To make families protagonists in the Family Pastoral. To this end, “an effort of evangelization and of catechesis directed to the heart of the family” (AL 200) is necessary because a disciple family also becomes a missionary family.
  4. To sensitize young people to the importance of being formed in the truth of love and in the gift of oneself with initiatives dedicated to them.
  5. To broaden the gaze and action of the family pastoral so that it becomes transversal to the family, to include the spouses, the children, the young people, the elderly and situations of family fragility.”

Initiatives and Resources

  1. Forum “Where are we with Amoris Laetitia? Strategies for the implementation of Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation,” from June 9 to 12, 2021, with leaders of the family pastoral of Episcopal Conferences, and international family Movements and Associations.
  2. Project “10 Amoris Laetitia Videos”: The Holy Father will recount the chapters of the Apostolic Exhortation, with families that will give witness of certain aspects of their daily life. Every month a video will be diffused to awaken the pastoral interest of the family in the dioceses and parishes of the whole world.
  3. #IamChurch: diffusion of some video testimonies on ecclesial leadership and the faith of handicapped people.
  4. To walk as a family”: 12 concrete pastoral proposals to walk as a family inspired by Amoris Laetitia.
  5. In view of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome in 2022, the dioceses and families of the whole world are invited to spread and reflect further on the catecheses that will be made available by the diocese of Rome and to engage in ad hoc pastoral initiatives.
  6. Celebration of a day for grandparents and elderly people.

“Tools of family spirituality, of formation and pastoral action in preparation for marriage, education to affection of young people, on the sanctity of spouses and families that live the grace of the Sacrament in their daily life, will be diffused,” adds the same source.

In addition, the Dicastery announces that international “University symposiums will be organized to explore the content and the implications of the Apostolic Exhortation in relation to the topical questions that affect families of the whole world”

The 2022 World Meeting in Rome

“Family love: vocation and way of holiness” is the theme chosen by Pope Francis for the next World Meeting of Families, which will be held in Rome in June 2022.

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PMPI Statement on the Killings and Arrests of Tumandok Indigeneous People

No day is holy for the state agents when in the silence of the morning dawn on 30 December 2020, while the whole nation is celebrating the coming of Jesus Christ, they barged into the homes of the Tumandok leaders servicing search warrants for illegal possession of firearms, ammunitions and explosives, and killed nine (9) environmental defenders and arrested seventeen (17) other leaders who they claimed as members of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA).

 We strongly condemn this irreverent and vicious act of killing by the police and the military of the Western Visayas region. This is but a result of the red-tagging policy of this blind and cold-blooded government which is aimed at dissenters. It fails to see acts of opposition and criticism of government actions and/or inactions as expressions of citizen’s democratic rights. It always wants to solve societal problems using state armed forces.

 Should we cower in silence in the face of this impunity? Should we just put the lives of the Tumandok leaders and those others killed by this government to waste?

 The Tumandok is an alliance of indigenous peoples’ communities in Capiz and in Iloilo which strongly opposes the construction of a billion-peso government project, Jalaur Mega Dam, that would greatly impact not only the Jalaur River and the environment but also the ancestral domains and the socio-economic activities of the Tumanduk community. Their strong resistance against the development project has led its members the subject of red-tagging by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), and harassment through intensified military presence in their communities.

 For many years, indigenous peoples who are at the forefront of the struggle to protect their land and the environment are being harassed and killed. The Global Witness “annual report into the killings of land and environmental defenders in 2019 shows the highest number yet have been murdered in a single year. 212 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2019 – an average of more than four people a week. Time after time, they have challenged those companies operating recklessly, rampaging unhampered through forests, skies, wetlands, oceans and biodiversity hotspots.”

 The state agent’s claim of regularity of their operation under the guise of Synchronized Enhanced Management of Police Operations (SEMPO) needs to be scoffed-at. The modus of planting evidence and claiming the unarmed victims fought back are like a broken record being played to justify their cowardly actions. Repeatedly, this alibi has been used to silence the victims of injustices. 

 We ask the government to recognize that war and violence is not a solution to a social malaise we now face and that dialogue and listening to what its constituents’ feel, think and desire should be the primary response to any problem.

 We thus, ask the government to change heart and heed to the cry of your people.

 We ask all the district representatives in Congress of Panay Island to protect their constituency, if the national government cannot do so. Do not separate yourselves from your people. We demand that as our representatives to truly represent us. We ask you to lead a clamor for a congressional investigation over this matter 

 And even as we urge the local governments to take action, we ask the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP),  Department of Justice (DOJ), the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) , and the whole body of Congress to initiate an impartial investigation to the injustice done to the Tumandoks tribes, and to all others related red-tagging killings and arrests.

 The Government exists to serve its citizens. Do not treat them lesser than you are, worse as your enemies. History is witness. When the time is right, the people’s will to achieve good will triumph.

Partnership Mission for People’s Initiatives (PMPI) is formerly the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc., a social development and advocacy network of 250 members from faith-based groups, non-government organizations and people’s organizations grouped into 15 regional clusters all over the Philippines.

How A Cold-Blooded Police Killing in Tarlac Threatens Us All

By John Molo
Chair, Political Law, UP College of Law
Past President, Harvard Law School Alumni Association (Philippines)

Four Days before Christmas, people woke up to the chilling video of a policeman killing a mother and son in front of their neighbors in Tarlac.  After thousands of deaths over the past 4.5 years, I wondered what made this one trigger national indignation. The video gave a clear answer.

Broad daylight. Several people watching. A crying mother hugging her son. The policeman clinically pulls out his gun. Shoots her point blank. Then he shoots her son. He shoots them again, then walks away. All of this as his young daughter watched.

The public wasn’t prepared to deal with a video that displays in full view the monster that the past four years had created – an emboldened and unaccountable police force. That policeman knew he was being recorded. It didn’t faze him. His casual manner implies it was not the first time he did it. Senator Angara called it “cold-blooded”. This is just the latest among many incidents- from Kian de los Santos, to Winston Ragos to the 4 soldiers massacred by policemen in Sulu. If the senator’s characterization is accurate, then what allowed cold-blooded killers to take root inside the national police force?

The military and the police are the only agencies the State entrusted with the monopoly to kill. After the Marcos dictatorship, the 1987 Constitution instituted provisions to erase the impunity of the Philippine Constabulary and replace it with a professional system. Though they did so at varying degrees, the presidents that followed worked on those principles to en-sure that the police of today would be different from its predecessors.

Unfortunately, these gains were systematically stamped out by the present one. You see this in the defensive statements of police higher-ups alluding to “property dispute”, and “altercation”, as if both justified the killing of mother and son. Whatever disagreement there was, we used to agree that the solution is to let the courts decide. Now, it doesn’t matter. Now all it takes is the judgment of the men wielding the gun. “Communist”. “Addict”. “Bayaran”. “Nanlaban”. “Mayabang”. Any of these words is a death sentence.

You see this in a now deleted Facebook post, where a municipal police station OIC described the Tarlac killing as a “lesson” adding that, “Kahit puti na buhok o ubanin na tayo eh matuto tayo rumispeto sa ating Kapulisan.” [Even if you are already old, learn to show respect to the police.] It seems we now have police officers that believe disrespectful seniors deserve to be shot. This, while assassins roam the country taking down doctors, lawyers and even judges.

This culture of impunity didn’t take hold overnight. It took 4 and a half years, and the blood of more than a thousand fellow Filipinos to get here. It started with the first “addict” killed in Tondo. It then turned to minors like Kian, as well as that baby dismissed as “collateral damage”. We saw it prey on journalists (“presstitutes”), teachers, students (“activists”) and even doctors (“communists”). We in the legal profession feel it in the loss of 55 (and counting) colleagues – from the killing of a young 35-year-old lawyer in Palawan to our judges who no longer feel safe in their own chambers. Whether it be vigilantes, death squads, assassins-for-hire or “rogue cops”, violent killings are now occurring at an alarming rate. Violence is overtaking law as the preferred method of dispute resolution.

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