On International Human Rights Day, the National Democratic Front-Eastern Visayas condemns the Duterte regime’s brutal attacks on human rights and the longstanding impunity of the state that GRP President Rodrigo Duterte now arrogates as his personal due. “An anti-drugs bloodbath of extrajudicial killings, political prisoners being held hostage as Duterte’s bargaining chips with the NDFP, government forces provoking the New People’s Army despite a mutual ceasefire,” said NDF-EV spokesperson Fr. Santiago “Ka Sanny” Salas. “The human rights situation under the Duterte regime is terrible because it is waging war against the people, be it called “anti-drugs” or “counter-insurgency,” instead of solving their problems. Duterte himself showed the continuing past in this impunity for human rights violations through approving the hero’s burial of the dictator Marcos.”
 
Fr. Salas expressed solidarity with the people who are struggling for human rights against worsened impunity under the Duterte regime. “We condemn the extrajudicial killings in Eastern Visayas and the whole country in the name of fighting drugs but that massacre the poor and are contemptuous of due process and solving poverty that is the real problem. We support the struggle to free all political prisoners, of which around 45 are from Eastern Visayas and continue to languish in jail on fabricated charges. We condemn the militarization of civilian communities in the countryside in violation of the CARHRIHL and the reciprocal ceasefire between the NDFP and the GRP. We condemn the militarization of Yolanda-struck urban poor communities in Tacloban City for the entry of big businesses, with forced relocation led by soldiers to relocation sites that are far away from the people’s livelihood, schools and other community needs.”
 
The NDF-EV spokesperson there was no better way for the people to defend their rights than to be roused, organized and mobilized to confront the Duterte government. “While the NDFP is in peace talks with the GRP led by Duterte, the people should all the more intensify their human rights struggle and air their aspirations for a just and lasting peace. The people must rise up against the trampling of basic civil and political rights against arbitrary arrests and detention as well as extrajudicial killings. They must support the struggle of the political prisoners who are the living symbols of the violations of civil and political rights under the GRP. They must demand the expulsion of the military from the civilian communities in the countryside and the cities, and the ending of the fascist Oplan Bayanihan. They must amass in their hundreds of thousands and millions to register to Duterte that their voices must be heard and heeded. If not, they are all the more justified in exercising their sovereign right to armed struggle in a just war for national and social liberation.”
 
https://www.cpp.ph/ndf-ev-urges-fight-human-rights-worsened-impunity-duterte-regime/