By Karapatan SMR
We mark March 11 as the beginning of justice for all human rights victims of former President Rodrigo Duterte. The Duterte regime ruled through bloodshed. Thousands of urban poor, workers, peasants, and indigenous people were brutally silenced – gunned down in the streets, abducted, and disappeared without a trace. The war on drugs, clearly, was a war on the poor, where state forces massacred communities and called it “justice.” The war on dissent saw activists, union leaders, and indigenous defenders executed in cold blood.
Extrajudicial killings were Duterte’s policy. Workers of Sumifru were attacked, their picket lines crushed by police and military forces. The Lumad were bombed, their schools shuttered, their leaders assassinated. Bai Bibyaon stood against corporate plunder until her last breath, but how many more defenders were buried under Duterte’s reign? In Mindanao alone, paramilitary groups unleashed terror, acting as Duterte’s death squads.
State violence was relentless. Red-tagging was not just propaganda; it was a hit list. Activists, human rights defenders, teachers, community leaders, journalists, and lawyers were branded as enemies and hunted down. The regime institutionalized political killings through the NTF-Elcac, turning public funds into weapons against the people. Those who spoke up were silenced. Those who resisted were executed.
Duterte and his lackeys desecrated democracy, trampling on civil liberties and treating human rights as obstacles to their reign. Now, the man responsible for mass murder demands due process – a right he denied thousands of victims. But justice demands due process — and this right he will get, unlike the thousands murdered in the name of “peace and order.”
We stand with the families of victims of extrajudicial killings. Duterte must answer for every life stolen, every community destroyed, every family shattered. The International Criminal Court must hold him accountable, not just for crimes against individuals, but for crimes against the Filipino people.
No impunity. No forgetting. No forgiveness.