Human Rights In The Philippines During COVID-19
Joanna K. Cariño
2019 Gwangju Human Rights Laureate
April 30, 2020
Antonio Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations has said:
The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health emergency — but it is far more.
It is an economic crisis. A social crisis… that is fast becoming a human rights crisis.
We have seen how the virus does not discriminate, but its impacts do — exposing deep weaknesses in the delivery of public services and structural inequalities that impede access to them.
We see the disproportionate effects on certain communities, the rise of hate speech, the targeting of vulnerable groups, and the risks of heavy-handed security responses undermining the health response.
More than ever, governments must be transparent, responsive and accountable. Civic space and press freedom are critical. Civil society organizations and the private sector have essential roles to play.
And in all we do, let’s never forget: The threat is the virus, not people.
Unfortunately, the Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has not heeded the words of the United Nations.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the human rights situation in the Philippines was already grave. With President Rodrigo Duterte’s authoritarian militaristic response to COVID-19, the human rights situation has worsened.
To start with, the President initially belittled the COVID-19 threat of pandemic, thus government response was late and hopelessly inadequate, especially given the situation of a long-neglected public health system.
As the numbers of people infected with the disease rose, Duterte ordered a Luzon-wide lockdown, whereby people had to stay in their homes under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ). The lockdown was implemented to curtail mobility, even while the Duterte regime did not have a comprehensive plan to contain the deadly virus, nor how to provide the survival needs of millions of poor families under lockdown who would lose their jobs and their incomes.
Furthermore, disproportionately large numbers of doctors and nurses at the COVID-19 frontlines were infected with the disease early on. Many have died due to the lack of personal protective equipment. The ill-equipped Philippine health system has not been able to provide for the facilities and equipment needed to face the pandemic, nor the necessary protection for health front liners.
Duterte called Congress to an emergency session in order to pass emergency legislation termed Bayanihan to Heal as One, (which was signed on March 24, 2020). The law placed the whole country under a state of emergency effective for three months unless extended. The President was given the power to realign funds to government measures that would address the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Some 18 million households were to receive an emergency cash subsidy of P5,000. or the equivalent of $100. The law also included a dangerous provision imposing penalities on anyone who would spread disinformation or fake news, which would be used to curtail freedom of information and free speech.
The president then appointed a group of generals to implement the National Action Plan. The police were deployed to man checkpoints and walk the streets to make sure that the people were abiding by the rules for the lockdown. The militarist mindset that COVID-19 was a peace and order issue instead of a public health emergency, and that people, not the virus was the problem, made the central role of the police and military subject to abuse of authority.
It is now seven weeks into the lockdown, but less than half of the targeted 18 million families have received anything from the government’s Social Amelioration Program. The government’s promise of relief has been very slow in coming, what with the stringent requirements and bureaucratic entanglements. This means that millions of families are now experiencing hunger and deprivation. Even worse, there have been charges of mis-use and corruption of the funds.
Much of the content in the news programs from day to day are of hungry people begging for food, or complaining that they have not received the promised relief and social amelioration. More and more people are demanding government support for all whose livelihoods have been suspended due to the lockdown, not only the informal and formal workers, but also other low-income families. The indigenous peoples, who have long-suffered historical government neglect, are among the most affected sectors.
Criticisms of the Duterte government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis have spiked, such that the OUST DUTERTE hashtag even trended on social media. An urban poor community in San Roque went out to demand the promised relief, for which they were arrested and charged. An artist in Cebu who came out with a sarcastic comment in Facebook was to be charged for purveying fake news. An overseas Filipino worker (OFW) in Taiwan was threatened with deportation after she posted critical Facebook posts.
There have been many reports of police abuse in checkpoints nationwide. A fish vendor was beaten, dragged and arrested in Quezon City simply for failing to wear a face mask. A mentally-challenged retired Army veteran in was shot dead for violating quarantine protocols. In Antipolo, 39 violators were asked to stay inside a detention court for ten hours without food or drink. Five youths were locked inside a dog cage after breaking curfew in Laguna. Police and barangay officials tortured quarantine violators in Koronadal City including punching, hair pulling, slapping, and forced feeding of siling labuyo.
The United Nations has raised concern over some countries’ repressive measures to implement lockdowns, citing the Philippines’ “highly militarized response” to contain the spread of COVID-19. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has said that police and security forces have used unnecessary force to make people abide by lockdown and curfew rules — with the victims mostly coming from the poor and vulnerable sectors. She warned that “Shooting, detaining, or abusing someone for breaking a curfew because they are desperately searching for food is clearly an unacceptable and unlawful response.”
The Philippines’ “highly militarized response” to the pandemic has led to the arrest of over a hundred fifty thousand people for violating Enhanced Community Quarantine ordinances.
Unfortunately, even under conditions of lockdown, the wider world does not stop.
While Duterte had announced that the Armed Forces of the Philippines would cease offensive military operations and re-channel their efforts to the pandemic, military operations continued in rebel hotspots. When the UN secretary-general called for a ceasefire to armed conflicts, the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army responded with an order to its combatants to desist from conducting tactical offensives. There have, however, been reports of some encounters between the two armed forces. The president has threatened to formally declare martial law, while democracy and peace-loving groups have called for the resumption of the peace talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the political vilification and red tagging of progressive civil society organizations is relentless. My organization, the Cordillera People’s Alliance for the Defense of Ancestral Domain and Self-Determination, has been under constant attack from the military and their trolls in social media. Direct threats have been made against our chairperson Windel Bolinget, and even his children have unjustly been included in their threats. Two helicopters hovered over Sagada, Mountain Province, and dropped black propaganda fliers, squandering government resources which could better have been used for much needed relief.
Illegal arrests on trumped up charges have continued, as have extra-judicial killings. The latest, as of today April 30, is Bayan Muna activist Jory Porquia, who was shot dead by unidentified men wearing masks in Iloilo City. Before this extra-judicial killing, he was harassed by the police for conducting feeding programs and relief operations for the urban poor communities and Bayan Muna members in Iloilo City.
Even relief operations of activist organizations have been targeted. A relief operation of the peasant organization Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas was stopped and brought to the police station in Norzagaray, Bulacan. They were to be charged with sedition, but public outcry led to their release.
In any kind of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the best of the people and the social activists stand out and shine. Non-government organizations, people’s organizations and civic-minded citizens and groups have pitched in to mitigate government’s shortfalls, although civilian relief operations have been subjected to bureaucratic rigmarole. At the community level, they create ways for the people to have food, shelter and medical care and to engage in mutual help. They call for donations from those who have more to be distributed to the less fortunate. And they do not get paid for the volunteer work that they render. The actions that they carry out for the common good under the circumstances of fighting the pandemic are their way of living out the activist slogan to serve the people.
The biggest problems under COVID 19 Enforced Community Quarantine are inadequate mass testing, slow social amelioration for the poor, the economic slowdown and the relentless assaults on human rights. Lockdown on its own will not succeed without the necessary medical and public health measures to address the pandemic, and the provision of social protection and economic assistance.
While there is the necessity for physical distancing, there is, more importantly, the need for social solidarity as the world battles the deadly COVID-19 virus.
The pandemic has unmasked the greed, selfishness, wastefulness and harmfulness of imperialism and the dominant capitalist neo-liberal order which has been the source of social inequality, environmental destruction, climate change and most other global crises that humanity has been confronted with. It is time to take stock and work towards a new normal, no more business as usual, as what was accepted as normal before COVID-19 has brought us to this global crisis.
Let us draw the important lessons from the survivals of the communal core value system of indigenous communities worldwide: common ownership of ancestral land and the means of production, community interest before private interest, stewardship of the environment for the succeeding generations, production for the common good, mutual help, food sharing, frugality – not wasting anything, simple living.
These altruistic communal core values have survived the test of time because they have relevance for all times. It is time now to work for system change and a more humane socialist future.
jpkc/04302020
References:
News reports
Rappler April 29, 2020
Bayanihan to Heal As One, March 24, 2020 (special law enacted by Philippine Congress)
Karapatan reports
IBON Foundation reports
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan Memoranda on COVID-19
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, April 23, 2020
Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, April 27, 2020
COVID-19 National and International Updates
Jose Maria Sison, 0n the International Situation, Covid-19 Pandemic and the People’s Response, April 9, 2020