HUNDREDS of Negrenses have joined the commemoration of the International Human Rights Day in Bacolod City on Saturday.
About 1,500 protesters marched from the Provincial Capitol Park and Lagoon, and Sacred Heart Seminary Shrine (Lupit Church) to the public plaza in the afternoon while 200 rallyists, including millennials, held a torch parade from the Capitol to the Fountain of Justice in the evening.
They criticized the hero’s burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the rising number of extrajudicial killings in the country.
Clarizza Dagatan, secretary-general of Karapatan-Negros, said they are calling for justice for the human rights victims especially during the Marcos regime.
She also appealed to the Duterte administration to free the more than 400 political prisoners in the country, including the four in Negros Occidental.
Lawyer Andrea Si of Concerned Citizens of Negros urged her fellow Negrenses to defend their rights.
“We can’t assume that we’re safe in our houses, that our human rights are protected,” she added.
Si noted that it’s alarming that the extrajudicial killings are increasing.
Asked to describe the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, she said: “It’s becoming a frightening replication of what happened before the martial law. I can see we’re leading there.”
‘Temperamental brats’
Joanne Lim of Block Marcos Movement said that Duterte should be held accountable for allowing Marcos to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Lim, who came from Manila for the mobilization in Bacolod, said there’s nothing wrong with the young people going out in the streets to fight for their rights.
“Age has nothing to do with mobilizing. We know our history. We went to school. We know what happened at that time (of the Marcos regime). We know many died. We won’t allow the elitists and the Marcoses to revise our history.”
Alvin Ballares of Akbayan Youth-Negros said that “millennials deserve the truth and not some twisted stories.”
“As a temperamental brat, I take liberty to exercise my right to express my thoughts freely which people in the past fought for, against the suppressive and oppressive Marcos government. Marcos was outright a human rights violator whose iron fist rule killed at least 7,000 individuals,” he added.