Ecuvoice calls on the Philippine government to stop deflecting issues, cooperate with UNHRC process

Press Release
September 18, 2019

QUEZON CITY – The World Council of Churches (WCC) together with the Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines (Ecuvoice) sponsored a side event in Geneva, Switzerland on the Philippine human rights situation, entitled “War vs. the Poor and Indigenous Peoples: Duterte and Human Rights Council.”

Joining human rights defenders, church leaders and victims of human rights abuses from the Philippines were representatives from the missions at the UN Human Rights Council, international NGOs and human rights organizations from the Philippines.

The side event was held at Palais Des Nations during the 42nd session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Peter Prove and Jennifer Philpot-Nissen of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs of the WCC served as moderators for the event.

Large-scale murder

Among the panelists who shared their real life stories was Marissa Lazaro, a mother whose son was slain in 2017.

"There is a large-scale murder of the poor,” said Marissa Lazaro.

“The police killed my son, Christopher. He is not a drug user. He is innocent,” she added. Just like the many other mothers who lost their loved ones from the Duterte government’s murderous war on drugs, Marissa continues to be strong amidst grief.

Lazaro is a member of Rise Up for Life and Rights’ (Rise Up), a network of families of victims of the government’s war on drugs. Her son, Christoper, was killed in a police anti-drug operations in 2017 after authorities claimed he refused arrest and fought back. She later found Christopher dead in a morgue in Bulacan, with nine (9) fatal bullet wounds in his body.

“The war on drugs is a sham,” Lazaro said. “We come to the United Nations Human Rights Council seeking help in putting a stop to the large-scale murder of poor people in the Philippines,” she added.

The UN HRC passed a resolution in July 2019 on human rights violations in the Philippines.

Attacks against indigenous people

“While urban poor communities are experiencing bloodbath through anti-narcotics police operations, our tribal communities endure long-term militarization,” said Bishop Antonio Ablon, a Mindanaoan and a long-time advocate of indigenous people’s rights.

“The Lumad people in Mindanao have long been ravaged by the government’s counter-insurgency war,” Ablon said. “The government brands them as communist-terrorists and wages war against them to force them off their ancestral land and hand it on to giant mining companies,” he added.

Ablon, a Bishop of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, himself is a victim of red-tagging and other threats on Mindanao.

Ablon called for support for the Lumad people’s right to their ancestral land against corporate plunder and militarization. “The violence Lumad people suffer at the hands of military is wrong and immoral, we must take it as our own collective responsibility to defend them and uphold their rights,” he added.

Villification, killings of human rights defenders

Cristina Palabay, Karapatan Secretary General and head of Ecuvoice delegation, said that the government’s war on drugs and counter-insurgency operations only resulted to the death of innocent civilians. “These are state instruments of an all-out war against the poor,” Palabay said.

Palabay lamented how those who defend human rights equally suffer vicious attacks. She noted that at least 155 human rights defenders across the country have been killed under the Duterte administration, including Karapatan human rights workers.