Bente Kwatro
By Mark Vincent A. Durano, News Editor

How can an administration safeguard human rights when the enforcers are the violators?

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. responds to the lasting chokehold of his family’s human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) breaches legacy through mere awareness and an incongruent task force that glosses over addressing these violations which heightened under his administration.

As part of his National Human Rights Action Plan this month, the President issued Executive Order (EO) No. 77 to cast an inter-agency committee (IAC) that will “raise awareness on IHL.” The task force shall assist in protecting persons who are not directly or no longer involved in armed conflicts through programs, treaties, international agreements, and other instruments.

The order also appoints the helms of the Department of National Defense to co-chair the committee. Notably, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Armed Forces of the Philippines, and Philippine National Police, who are at the forefront of red-tagging, fascist attacks, and ultimately human rights violations are agency members that would “help” in promoting humanity.

Another task force on top of the saturated government places IAC-IHL on a streamline of glossed committees that have all hung as ornaments of a punitive state. After all, its leading agencies are breachers themselves; thus, the new task force can follow the same pattern of performative governance.

A familiar scheme constitutes the IAC on the freedom of association of workers through EO No. 23 last year. However, its ineffectiveness can be observed in the continuous red-tagging and trumped-up charges against labor workers. Most recently, Nexperia Philippines busted four officials of its worker union to derail their collective bargaining agreements or CBA negotiations.

Persisting and intensified human rights attacks only prove that the Duterte regime’s ‘whole of nation approach’ just loomed large. Operations of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict remain as well as the Oplan Double Barrel. Throughout the first two years of his term, the Dahas project of the Third World Studies Center recorded at least 800 drug-related killings.

Since Duterte signed the Anti-Terror Law, it has been continuously weaponized to detain political opponents on suspicious charges. Just this month, 74-year-old Martial Law survivor Tomas Dominado was arrested for alleged murder and rebellion along with his caregiver for charges of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition, and providing support to a “terrorist organization.”

In light of this, the KARAPATAN cited 757 political prisoners currently detained, 148 of which were nabbed under the current government—97 of these detainees are sick, 103 are elderly, 17 are National Democratic Front consultants and staff, and 156 are women.

Moreover, 119 cases of extrajudicial killings, 76 frustrated extrajudicial killings, 14 enforced disappearances, as well as 43,582 victims of forced evacuation, 63,380 victims of indiscriminate firing, and 46,921 victims of bombing under the Marcos Jr. administration’s counterinsurgency campaign have also been recorded by KARAPATAN.

These accounts are not isolated and numbers will keep growing until abusers are abolished, the culture of state impunity is ended, and offenders are held accountable—far from the IHL task force’s mere aim to assess.

A superficial approach to bureaucratic policies and administrative power rings hollow against the backdrop of a government masking themselves as ‘progressive’ and ‘humane’ while widespread vilification persists.

The administration’s refusal to confront the root of such attacks outlines these initiatives as incompetent at best and menacingly deceptive at worst.

With a newly painted image, the initiative would divert international recognition. Nonetheless, UN International Rapporteur Irene Khan denounced the administration’s sharpeye on activists, journalists, and mass organizations as well as the intimidation, harassment, judicial prosecution, privation of liberty, and violent attacks that often follow this targeting.

Awareness of these human rights and IHL violations is stagnant, especially if it comes from the perpetrators themselves. Rather, it is the masses’ capacity to surpass superficiality, adding pressure to demand justice—only obtained once fascist ruling is dismantled.

(Photo by Melvin James Urubio/FEU Advocate)