KARAPATAN is honored to receive the recognition of Amnesty International Philippines as the Most Distinguished HRD–Organization in its Ignite Awards for Human Rights Season 4, with the theme #BilangTibak under its Global Protect the Protest Campaign.
We greet Amnesty International on its 65th anniversary, and commend its work of defending human rights globally. We congratulate our fellow awardees – Rep. Sarah Elago, Kim “Enkoryaw” Falyao and Brian Barrios.
The right to protest is a fundamental right of peoples to air their grievances and demands. It is an expression of our collective aspiration for people’s rights to be recognized, respected and upheld.
Unfortunately, in the Philippines and elsewhere in the world, particularly in India, Myanmar, Palestine and the US, it is likewise one of the most violated rights, especially in the past years of rising protests against the unmitigated plunder of public funds, the destruction of the environment, the theft of lands and resources from peasants and indigenous peoples and the imposition of slave wages and inhumane working conditions, the lack of social services, the preponderance of gender-based violence and harassment, violations of national sovereignty and other atrocities against the people.
The exercise of the right to protest as well as other rights has been demonized and criminalized by those in power to maintain the state of impunity and the status quo. KARAPATAN has been labeled and called many names to lay the pretext for further violations. Seventy of our human rights workers have been killed, while some were abducted and disappeared. Our colleagues Alexander Philip Abinguna, Glendhyl Malabanan and Alexandrea Pacalda are detained on fabricated cases, while many others, including Felipe Gelle in Negros face trumped-up charges. Names and pictures of our human rights workers in Metro Manila, Bicol, Southern Tagalog, Central Luzon, Ilocos, Cordillera, Eastern Visayas, Central Visayas, Panay and Mindanao, who had been diligently documenting rights violations, have been strewn on social media and in public places, making them potential targets of graver human rights violations.
The recent weeks have been difficult for many human rights defenders, marked with grief and outrage. A massacre has been perpetrated in Negros island, in addition to countless other massacres. At the backdrop of all these is the extrajudicial killing of up to 30,000 alleged drug suspects under Duterte and the continuing drug war-related killings under Marcos Jr. that have already claimed more than a thousand victims.
The killings, enforced disappearances, torture, illegal arrests and detention, bombings and other human rights violations continue because the repressive policies that engender them continue. Duterte and Marcos Jr. may be political rivals, but they are the same under the skin.
In the face of all this, KARAPATAN has persevered because we have always been one with the people, sharing weal and woe. We share their pain, but we rejoice with them in their triumphs as we persevere in the struggle to build a society where people’s rights are cherished and advanced.
This recognition is one of those triumphs. It is a vindication even as we face heightened vilification from those who cannot tolerate dissent and those who stand in the way of much-needed social change.
Our national officers, member organizations and chapters and our individual members and volunteers are humbled with this recognition. We dedicate this to the martyrs of KARAPATAN and of the Filipino people, and we pledge to work even harder as we confront the greater challenges that await us.
