Militant students, teachers, drivers, farmers, laborers and women’s group who were members of Bayan-Central Visayas join the Nov. 25, 2016 nationwide Black Friday protest against the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani by holding a rally in Colon Street, Cebu City. (CDN FILE PHOTO).
IT will be a creative protest this afternoon by members of the Cebu Citizens Assembly to commemorate International Day of Human Rights.
A nativity scene will be used during their march from Sto. Rosario Parish Church to the Fuente Osmeña Circle while all attendees will come wearing black shirts.
Teody Navea, secretary general of Sanlakas–Cebu, said the effigies of the nativity scene will have the faces of the late ousted president Ferdinand Marcos as the “father,” his wife Ilocos Sur Rep. Imelda Marcos as the “mother” while President Rodrigo Duterte will be their “son.”
Navea told Cebu Daily News that they were alarmed that “Duterte is shaping (to be) a dictator” amid a rise in extrajudicial killings (EJKs) in the country, and the passage of the death penalty bill at the House Committee on Justice.
“This death penalty will just result to more killings in our country,” Navea said by phone yesterday.
This was the reason why the protest, themed as “No To Tyranny, Defend Human Rights, will not just focus on the protests over the burial of Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani but will also raise other issues like EJK, he added.
Justine Balane, coordinator for Akbayan Youth Cebu, on the other hand, said that even if the Senate committees on justice, public order and illegal drugs have concluded there was no state-sponsored killings of drug suspects, Duterte never lifted a finger to stop EJKs and even endorsed killings several times publicly.
“With this unfettered killings, nobody is safe and Duterte’s actions violate the same Article 3 of the (Constitution), the right to personal security. This is the same extrajudicial killing that Marcos used to silence those who opposed his martial rule,” Balane said.
“The observance of this special day in the Philippines has become more significant because the Duterte administration has been wanton in its violation of human rights,” Balane added.
It was on Dec. 10, 1948 when 48 countries including the Philippines adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) during the general assembly of the United Nations in Paris.
Balane said Akbayan Youth Cebu will be mobilizing around 500 protesters today to pressure the government into shedding light on the unresolved cases of EJK and other pressing issues of human rights violations in the country.
He said Akbayan Youth Cebu believed Duterte’s pronouncement that encouraged policemen to kill drug suspects triggered the sharp rise in drug-related deaths to over 4,000 in just five months since he took office, nearly half of which resulted from police operations.
To Balane, Duterte has become an “endorser” of EJKs.
“His being vocal about immediately killing drug suspects (who resist arrest) without due process is enough evidence itself (of his responsibility over the summary killings),” Balane said.
The young activist also said that Duterte’s uncompromising fight against illegal drugs has encouraged “moonlighting policemen,” a term used to describe some members of the police force who allegedly kill for a fee.
Balane said instead of killing drug suspects, the government must focus on their rehabilitation, pointing out that violent anti-drug wars did not work in countries like Colombia.