No changes in ‘repressed’ civic spaces a year into Marcos presidency — report
MANILA, Philippines — Despite the president’s roadshows abroad touting the Philippines’ improved human rights situation, rights watchdog CIVICUS has rated the state of civic spaces under President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as “repressed.”
CIVICUS Monitor, a global research institution that rates and tracks civic space in 197 countries, described the civic spaces in the Philippines as “repressed” one year into the Marcos presidency, giving it the "second worst rating a country can have."
There has been “little action to improve human rights protections in the Philippines” since Marcos began his term on June 30, 2022, CIVICUS said, citing local rights groups’ documentation of continued attacks on fundamental freedoms, namely reports of surveillance, harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, killings and alleged enforced disappearances of activists.
“Concerns documented in recent years include the arrest and detention of activists often on fabricated charges. Civil society has also documented the criminalisation, harassment and attacks against journalists. Human rights defenders have been ‘red-tagged’, putting them at risk of arrest or even killing,” CIVICUS said.
“Accountability for these actions has been virtually non-existent,” it added.
Spike in involuntary disappearances
One of the most alarming practices under Marcos is the "rapid rise in the number of involuntary disappearances," CIVICUS said, in addition to the continued practice of "unjustly jailing activists" and government critics.
The report stated that eight victims of enforced disappearance have been documented in the first ten months of Marcos’ presidency.
CIVICUS also cited the recent killing of a labor organizer in Bacolod, the surveillance of activists and a peasant activist arrested in Bohol, the arrest of activists under the Anti-Terrorism Law and a restrictive military order that targets non-government organizations.
An ecumenical youth group has monitored at least 21 cases of alleged abductions of activists and organizers by military personnel since Marcos assumed the presidency, some of whom remain missing despite clamor from academic institutions and rights groups for their safe return.
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Two of those still missing since they disappeared in April are indigenous people’s rights activists Gene Roz Jamil “Bazoo” de Jesus and Dexter Capuyan.
De Jesus and Capuyan’s families scored a judicial victory this week after the Court of Appeals ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police to present the UP alumni to court, ruling that their families' petition for a writ of habeas corpus as "sufficient in form and substance."
Marcos has consistently vowed that the Philippine government is committed to improving human rights in his numerous trips abroad and meetings with other state leaders, some of which have led to lucrative investment pledges.
Human Rights Watch, however, has urged the Marcos government to take "concrete action" to stop the rights violations and attacks on human rights defenders in the country, adding that the Philippines’ foreign allies “should stop getting a runaround” from the president.
Under Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the president's father, there were at least 3,257 known extrajudicial killings, 35,000 documented tortures, 77 "disappeared", and 70,000 incarcerations, according to Amnesty International, Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, and similar human rights monitoring entities.
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