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| Migrant workers gather outside the United Centre in Admiralty, where the Consulate is located. |
By Vir B. Lumicao
About 60 militant overseas Filipinos and their local supporters called for an end to brutal killings and condemned President Rodrigo Duterte’s alleged drift towards tyranny as they marked the 45th year of the declaration of martial law by Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The protesters who wore black shirts like their counterparts in Manila, vowed to resist Duterte’s threats to impose martial law nationwide in an hour-long noontime rally at the Consulate in Admiralty under the watchful eyes of about a dozen policemen.
“We did our part in resisting the old tyrant, we shall do our part in resisting the rising tyranny of the Duterte government. We say no to Duter-tyranny!” declared Eman Villanueva, chairman of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) Hong Kong and Macau Chapter.
He also said, “Duterte is on his way to becoming the new Marcos!”
The rally was in response to calls for protests by the Movement Against Tyranny, which spearheaded a massive rally at Rizal Park on the same day.
Towards the end of the protest, a joint statement signed by various Hong Kong-based organizations and individuals expressing opposition “to the rising tyranny and threats of nationwide martial rule” by the Duterte administration was presented to a Consulate representative.
The signatories included prominent church leaders and human rights advocates in the community.
They said Duterte’s path to tyranny is shown by the following acts:
- the unabated killings by the police and the armed forces of up to 13,000 people, mostly in the name of the war on drugs
- the declaration of martial law in the whole of Mindanao
- the attacks on the judiciary and the “immobilization” of the Commission of Human Rights
- the declaration of an end to peace talks with the leftist National Democratic Front of the Philippines
- enabling the return of the Marcoses to power, including allowing the burial of Ferdinand Marcos in the ‘Libingan ng mga Bayani”
“We are united in condemning the senseless deaths due to the mindless war on drugs. We are united in safeguarding the gains of the Filipino people in the long struggle against the former dictatorship of Marcos. We are united in stemming the new tide of tyrannical rule that grips the country,” said the joint statement
The rally’s first speaker, Fr Dwight dela Torre of the Philippine Independent Church, said the government is mandated to protect people’s lives yet its war on drugs had already left more than 13,000 mostly poor victims of extrajudicial killings.
He said there were “unabated killings of peasants, indigenous people and human rights, justice and peace advocates and political activists” suspected to have been carried out by police and vigilantes.
All rally speakers including Eni Lestari of the Asian Migrants’ Coordinating Body and Hong Kong trade union leaders and human rights advocates said Duterte’s all-out war against communist rebels was victimizing civilians, peasants, and indigenous peoples.
Villanueva said protests will continue in the Philippines and in various cities and countries around the globe for as long as Duterte takes “the path of martial rule and puppetry to foreign powers.”
“Duter-tyranny, as with the fascism of Marcos, will face the resistance of Filipinos everywhere. It did not triumph before and will surely not triumph now,” he concluded.
