Can President Duterte Make The ISPs Obey The Law?

The massive increase in child sexual abuse videos and images transmitted online over the internet passing through the servers of the Internet service providers (ISPs)- Globe Telecom and PLDT /Smart- has increased from 19,000 in 2019 to 47,937 in 2020 as the result of the lockdown. This is according to the Philippine government Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles speaking for President Rodrigo Duterte.

The child pornography and on-line live streaming of sex acts on Filipino children are continuous horrific heinous crimes as some victims are as young as three years old, among the many thousands sexually abused.

The ISPs and telecommunication corporations have ignored the provision of the 2009 Anti-Child Pornography Law or Republic Act 7995, specifically Section 9 that this writer helped draft and lobbied for strict implementation ever since as published in The Manila Times (The Sunday Times) on many occasions.

No less than President Rodrigo Duterte and his cabinet, in a joint meeting, have issued an order to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to slap sanctions on the telecommunications corporations for non-compliance with the law. This writer has called for penalties against the ISPs and recommended one million pesos a day sanction on each ISP until they show proof that they are complying with the law. Presently, they allegedly escape compliance and agree to pay a small fine rather than obey the law and install blocking software to intercept the child pornography and report it to the authorities as the law demands.

These are the most powerful corporations in the Philippines, not only for financial power, but technological power. They can defy even the government of President Duterte as they are doing at present. In an instant, they can paralyze the nation by cutting off Internet connections and crippling the social media upon which millions depend including the government and the entire economy. We will now campaign through non-government organizations in other countries to pressure their telecommunication corporations to reconsider their partnership with Philippine ISPs Globe Telecom and PLDT/Smart that are non-compliant with Section 9 of RA 9775.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, speaking for President Rodrigo Duterte said as quoted in the media, “All ISPs should also install available technology, program or software to ensure that access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography will be blocked or filtered, according to the law.” That is a powerful order for them to comply. But will they do it?

Who is top dog in this stand-off, which is the most powerful, President Rodrigo Duterte or the presidents and board members of the telecommunications corporations? Will President Duterte and his cabinet really stand strong and compel the ISPs to comply and install and monitor the blocking software?

The ISPs don’t want to do this as they fear losing hundreds of thousands of customers. What kind of evil business is it that is making money by allowing child abusers here and abroad access child pornography and allow child sexual abuse to live-stream through their servers? The arrogance of power knows no limit and the corporations have this kind of power. The software is easily available. Microsoft is just one corporation that can do it effectively using PhotoDNA and VideoDNA technology.

There is a growing movement to repeal section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of the USA that allows the ISPs NOT to be held responsible for what is posted on their servers and networks. After the attack on the Capitol Building in Washington DC driven by social media, that will now change.

The Philippine ISPs are fighting back against Section 9 of RA 9775. They are trying to get an amendment to RA 9775 through the proposed bill of Rizal Second District Rep. Fidel Nograles to members of congress under the guise of strengthening the RA 9775. He is proposing that the most important provision that requires the ISPs to install the child pornography blocking software BE REPEALED! Nograles has filed last year House Bill (HB) 7633 that seeks to remove Section 9 of RA 9775. That is a wrong and immoral proposal. Section 9 is the strongest provision of the law that aims to protect children from child sexual abusers. We can only presume that the ISPs are behind this bill.

Now that President Rodrigo Duterte and his cabinet has correctly come out to support the thousands of Filipino children being sexually abused on-line and in child pornography, that obnoxious bill will die the death it deserves. President Duterte should end his war-on-drugs having done all he can and start a new “war” against child pornography and on-line streaming of child sexual abuse, a true and noble endeavour.

His biggest challengers are the telecommunication corporations. Will he and his government have the courage and power to rise up to meet the ISPs’ arrogant stand of non- compliance with section 9 of RA 9775? Will he reform the NTC and appoint child-friendly defenders?

The question is, “Are the present officials following the command of the ISPs or following President Duterte and his cabinet?” There must be reform of the NTC and imposition of fines of a million pesos a day until compliance is done. Also, a strong legal action by the Department of Justice is needed to enforce the law.

Child defenders can campaign and appeal to the global telecommunication corporations that are in partnership with the Philippine telecommunication corporations to require the Philippines ISPs to be more ethical and lawful. These global companies exercise more corporate responsibility and higher ethical standards. They could decide not to renew contracts with the Philippine ISPs.

Hundreds of thousands of children could be protected and saved from the horrific abuse that they suffer to satisfy the lust and sexual desires of paedophiles and the profit of their enablers. The children are the most important of all in society. The role of governments is to protect the citizens and children are the most vulnerable and need strong action to save and protect them.

Speaking the Truth

What greater duty does any person of integrity have than to speak the truth about that which is morally wrong, unjust and despicable? To speak one’s mind, to challenge injustice, abuse, exploitation, torture and the unlawful taking of life is a serious obligation. It is a constitutional right to do so supposedly without fear of retaliation and persecution. There is always the threat, fear and acts of retaliation against those brave and courageous people who speak the truth to power. History is full of heroes who were arrested, tried in a court, condemned, and put to death for speaking the truth, challenging injustice and oppression, taking a stand against what is clearly wrong and immoral.

When we look upon a crucifix we see there an innocent man that believed and practiced the great values of equality, rights of all, justice, truth, freedom and dignity of women and children. We see there a person who stood his ground. He taught the truth, healed the sick, championed the poor and challenged corrupt oppressive authorities. He was plotted against, betrayed, falsely accused of subversion, libel, and blasphemy. He was arrested, jailed, tortured and put on trial, wrongly condemned, and given the death penalty.

He is a person we can admire and imitate and those who are true believers in the values he taught and lived and died for will do likewise. They will proclaim the truth and oppose wrongdoing by individuals, groups, institutions or government. This is to follow that example and live out a courageous unselfish commitment.

Hundreds of people living out that commitment to justice have suffered. Many had their lives taken away or destroyed by the forces they challenged, questioned, and opposed while working for human rights and social justice. It is a privilege and honor to fight for justice and defend the right to life and dignity and to be persecuted for it.  

So the four Philippine bishops, several priests, a religious brother and lay people who are being charged with sedition and libel by the authorities can count themselves blessed and privileged to follow in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth. 

The National Catholic Reporter wrote, “Philippine authorities have filed sedition, cyber-libel, libel, and obstruction of justice charges against 36 people including the country's vice president and members of the opposition. Church leaders charged include Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan, Bishop Honesto Ongtioco of Cubao, Bishop Pablo Virgilio David of Kalookan, retired Bishop Teodoro Bacani Jr. of Novaliches, Divine Word Fr. Flaviano Villanueva, Jesuit Fr. Albert Alejo, Fr. Robert Reyes, and Lasallian Br. Armin Luistro, former education secretary.”

They are all seen to have advocated the right to life and security and have spoken out in protest at the killing of many people by death squads and police raids on suspected drug users and dealers. However they are being charged with sedition, more or less as Jesus was.

He said to his disciples, “If the world hates you, you must remember that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, then the world would love you as its own. But I choose you from this world and you do not belong to it, this is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too.” Gospel of John 15:18-20.

The charges however are for libel, cyber libel, and sedition. This is how UCAN news reported it. “The charges stem from the release of a video that went viral on several social media platforms early this year that linked President Rodrigo Duterte and his family to the illegal drug trade.  A certain Peter Joemel Advincula claimed on a video and in a media briefing early this year that Duterte’s son, Paolo Duterte, and presidential aide Bong Go were involved in drug syndicates.”

Weeks later, however, he was presented at a press conference by the Philippine National Police where he claimed Vice President Leni Robredo, opposition members and several church people were behind a plot against the president. The complaint of obstruction of justice, which was filed, was supposedly based on information about a meeting between Advincula and the accused “despite them being clearly aware of Mr. Advincula being a fugitive from the law."

As UCAN reported:  “The complaint alleged that the crimes of inciting sedition, libel and obstruction of justice were committed inside Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University "wherein they planned to spread false information" against the president's family and administration officials. It said the accused aimed to "agitate the general population into staging mass protests with the possibility of bringing down the president.” Opposition senator Francis Pangilinan of the Liberal Party said the complaint smacked of "political harassment and persecution.”  The other accused are mostly staff members of the Liberal Party, lawyer Theodore Te of the Free Legal Assistance Group, and officials of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines,” UCAN said.

All the accused have filed their affidavits in response to the charges denying anything whatsoever to do with that video and the allegations it proposed. Other commentators observe  that it is an attempt to silence the criticism from the critical dissenting voices.

The presidential palace has distanced itself from the police action. "We have nothing to do with this case. Not at all," said Salvador Panelo, Duterte's spokesman. Others observe that the police charges brought before the prosecutor is ill-advised, as it will only hurt the president and his family by continually bringing before the public the baseless allegations by playing the outrageous videos over social media.

Whatever the outcome of the charges against the Church people, the outspoken bishops, priests and laity- one shocking thing is clear: there are so few bishops, priests and lay people speaking out. Many are asking, who else is standing up for human rights, besides these people and brave media people and rights advocates? Surveys show that the president is receiving 80 percent approval rates in surveys.   

US Military Bases Disguised as Philippine Bases are Here Again

 

Last 17 April 2018, the first US-built military facility was begun with a groundbreaking ceremony by Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and the US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim. This is being done under an agreement signed in 2014 known as the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).The first US-funded building is at Basa Airforce Base in Pampanga.

 

The EDCA that allows these facilities inside Philippine military bases was made by President Benigno Aquino III and is not a treaty approved by the Philippine Senate as demanded by the constitution but is an executive agreement. Several legal authorities question the legality of that executive agreement when the approval of foreign bases is the sole prerogative of the Philippine Senate. That may be likely the reason that its implementation has been held in abeyance until this week.

   

Why President Rodrigo Duterte, a staunch critic of the  United States and close friend of their adversary China, has allowed the implementation of this agreement made by the previous president has yet to be seen. The ultimate and real purpose of the new US bases within Philippine bases remains unclear. The primer explaining the EDCA distributed at the time of the signing of the agreement goes to great lengths to stress that the facilities are to enhance the ability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to defend the county from external threats. They are to “promote between the Philippines and its defense treaty ally the United States the following:

 

•  Interoperability

•  Capacity-building towards AFP modernization

•  Strengthening AFP for external defense

•  Maritime security

•  Maritime domain awareness

•  Humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR)

 

However, the recently announced agreement between President Duterte and President Xi  of China to cooperate and develop the natural resources of the West Philippine Sea claimed by China precludes any US intervention.  Even if China has constructed military facilities on several reefs and islands including airstrips, no US assistance has been called for. The UN Arbitration on the Law of the Sea has ruled in favor of the Philippines to the disputed territory.

 

The stated purpose of the EDCA is in part to ensure “maritime security and maritime domain awareness.” So that has been rendered moot. Again, another stated objective is the “strengthening (of the) AFP for external defense.” Is the Armed Forces of the Philippines facing any external threat, a possible invasion or attack, occupation perhaps? No, there is none. So the implementation of the bases agreement under EDCA must have another purpose, which President Dutere in his wisdom, has allowed but about which he has remained silent.

 

The facilities are to enhance training and capacity-building of the AFP, the primer states. But these annual training exercises have continued for the past 25 years without the presence of US Bases. Why so many US bases within bases? Most AFP camps will have US troops and war material stored there.

   

The only single reason for these facilities is to support humanitarian aid in times of disasters. That alone is insufficient to justify massive expenditure on so many facilities when the Philippine Red Cross has stated that supposedly it has expanded its capability to deal with disasters. It is tasked with that duty and claims it can do it without foreign aid in most cases. There are few natural disasters of such magnitude that foreign US aid is required.

 

The only threat that the Philippines is facing is internal: the New People’s Army (NPA), the threat from ISIS and the recent occupation of Marawi by a rebel group. The need for prepositioned war material and US assistance was seen in the subsequent battle and destruction by aerial bombardment with the alleged help of US advisors and surveillance planes. Their involvement is as yet unconfirmed. These would be the only use of prepositioned US troops and war material, ammunition and supplies. Such material could also be available to support other US war action in Southeast Asia or Afghanistan.

 

There is no confirmed number of US troops that will be assigned to these US bases within Philippine bases. It is stated they are assigned there but will be on rotation. How long will they stay is unknown.

  

So twenty-five years after the US bases were closed down and the facilities were converted to civilian commercial use and Clark and Subic Naval Base became boom cities boasting hundreds of factories, hotels and malls, the bases are back. They are hiding behind a fig leaf claiming that they are not US bases but within Philippine military bases. It’s just a charade. The US troops stationed there will be likely out and about looking for recreational entertainment with sex and will join the already thriving mob of sex tourists that are abusing our young women and children with impunity.

 

The fact that the sex industry with its sex bars and clubs that are fronts for prostitution of women and children is licensed and given mayor’s permits shows local government complicity. The US bases to be reestablished are complicit, not only in violating the spirit of the constitution but violating our women and children that are victims of human trafficking- yet again.

Philippine Democracy Under Threat

The young man, Jake, 22 years old and single, laughed when I asked him whom he voted for in the local elections for mayor. He said he abstained, but he went to the house of the mayor and received a payment all the same. "Why not", he reasoned, "it was for free everyone was going there". 

The mayor was "reelected" and his local family dynasty, linked to a bigger family dynasty became more influential. His father before him had been mayor several times and then became a congressman. The families of the elites are connected by marriage and by political allegiance to candidates for the presidency. Family dynasties have, in reality, replaced political parties; the children of the politician usually succeed the parent in office. In Philippine democracy allegiances shift and change with the shift in political power.   

That is the way it is in Philippine democracy. Votes are bought and those candidates with the most money and favors to give away will get back into power. They use that power to establish their reign continually through relatives. It is the dance of the dynasties that rule through the so-called democratic process in the country. It is flawed and what remains of the democratic process is under threat from its own inherent weakness.

The top family dynasties are immensely wealthy. In the Philippines there are eight leading US dollar billionaires and estimates claim that 1% of the populations are super rich and control 70 % of the economy and the wealth. There are ten million in poverty and 5.3 million in extreme poverty. Many of them will sell their "democratic" vote to the highest bidder. Political power is essential for the dynasties to survive. The constitution demands an end to dynastic families but no legislation has been passed banning them.

The power of patronage is nothing new but a hangover of the client-ruler system that dominated the Philippines since the Spanish era. Then the rich families pacified the submissive poor and hungry with handouts of small favors. The poor were so miserable they took what they could get and were docile clients of the ruling families. The Spanish saw that their ruling class owned the land and property and the poor worked it for them. Eventually the poor rebelled and overthrew the Spanish elite but the properties are still controlled by the remaining wealthy elite passed down through the generations.

They ruled and reaped the riches and still do through their successors. They dominate the Philippine congress where most members are millionaires and they are there to promote and protect the business and political interests of their dynastic backers. The poor and lower middle class of workers are excluded from the political process and many sell their vote. Surveys show that the average approval rating of Philippine democracy is between 60 to 80 percent among Filipinos. In September 2017 it was a 86 % approval rating of those polled and this has dropped six points.

Although the system of government is based on the US model of  elected representatives in two houses and a strong presidency, it is usually the president who gets the congress to support him by offering financial incentives to the congressional representatives and senators. It's reality that payouts win support.

This is the pork barrel system of doling out huge sums to the politicians to buy their support and most swing from opposition to back the president whoever he or she may be. While the Supreme Court ruled that pork barrel payouts are illegal it is still done one way or the other. But the President can also hurt the business interests of those in congress who oppose him.  

However Filipinos are a very friendly, tolerant, and forgiving people and they have learned to accept and live with reality. They accept the age old "Golden Rule", meaning that the rich have the gold, and they rule. The average Filipino does not have any idea how the ruling class or the political oligarchy could be changed or even if it should be changed. The ideal of real democracy "For the people, by the people, with the people", has never been really present in the experience of the people. So-called democracy has been "By the rich, for the rich" with the poor excluded.

The ordinary people have no independent ordinary person as an alternative political leader with a structure that could match and beat the family dynasty system to win an election or the money to buy enough votes.  The most recent elections typified these contending dynastic family feuds. Five contenders of the elite families backed by various financial vested interests fought each other for the presidency. They divided the vote and dissipated the vote buying power of the traditional dynasties and their ambition and greed left the door open for a populist outsider from a minority family dynasty. The people saw that it was a chance to break away from the divided feuding traditional politicos and vote for a charismatic newcomer, a mayor from Davao City.  He was running as an anti-elitist strongman and he became a celebrity. The close links with his  vice-presidential candidate being Bong Bong Marcos with the support of the Marcos billions victory was assured. Although Mr. Marcos did not get elected vice-president it was a close call. 

Democracy today is challenged by the congress as they try to form a body to change the constitution and form a federal system as the Presidents wants. This would transfer greater power to the dynastic families ruling in their area of influence. Many proposed changes are self-serving proposals.  Democracy flawed as it is, will be all the more weakened if they get their way. 

The Nobel Peace Prize Nomination 2017

The German Bundestag Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development led by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights and Policy and Humanitarian Aid, Dr Bärbel Kofler, nominated last February the work done by the Preda Foundation, Father Shay Cullen and his team for the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. It can only now be made public.

 

The prestigious nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize by such a distinguished parliamentary group highlights the work of the Preda Foundation and hundreds of Filipino human rights advocates working in seriously deteriorating conditions of human rights violations. It is a dangerous and risky work by hundreds of courageous Filipinos defending the helpless victims.

 

Rodrigo Duterte told his police last 16 August 2017 to “shoot those who are part of (drug activity). If they are (members of human rights organizations) and are obstructing justice shoot them,” he ordered. He also said that human rights organizations could possibly face criminal investigation for criticizing his anti-drug campaign. “One of these days, you human rights groups, I will also investigate you, that’s the truth, for conspiracy,” he told the media. In December 2016 he also threatened to kill human rights defenders.

 

Despite these dire warnings, the advocates continued standing up, marching, writing and speaking out for the rule of law and human dignity. The nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, while given to one, is for all. It is a signal of solidarity and support for all the human rights advocates.  

 

Anton is a teenager that recently sought refuge and protection in the Preda home for boys. He feared that he was tagged as a drug dependent and frightened that he would be killed by a vigilante group or by the police. Preda has sheltered and protected hundreds of youth from violations of their rights by rescuing them from horrid dangerous jail cells and from the streets and dangerous situations. More young people are being targeted by the death squads and as many as 54 children have been killed already. The total estimated number dead is at 12,700 since May 2016.

 

The blatant killing of 17-year-old Kian De los Santos in August this year ignited a outpouring of anger and rage among Filipinos and now 60 percent of the people  polled say that they believe only the poor are being killed. Another 14-year old youth and his companion, 19 years old were found dead, their faces wrapped in plastic tape, the marks of extrajudicial killing.

 

Seventy percent of the people interviewed in a SWS poll said that they fear the death squads might target their relatives or neighbors. Most of the accused are the very poor and killed for abusing a few grams of “shabu,” an illegal drug. Others are killed for a bounty payment. This has thrown the spotlight on the recent Senate investigations on the smuggling into the Philippines of large quantities of crystal meth drugs, commonly known as “shabu” by a Davao group to which the son of the president has been linked. The president said that he would resign if the allegations were proven and he would kill his son if he was proven to be using illegal drugs.

   

The wave of street protests by thousands of Filipinos against the killings has indicated that the silent majority of Filipinos is finding a voice and is against the killings and the human rights violations. The human rights advocates’ hard work is showing results in greater public awareness of the moral values and rule of law values at stake. Some of the supportive media is also speaking out against the human rights violations.

  

The Church is finding its voice too through a few outspoken leaders like Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan and Bishop Pablo David of Caloocan where many youth have been killed. The archbishop is offering protection to police who would turn to confess in public their involvement in the killings and the violations of human rights by the extrajudicial killings of innocent people.

 

But despite this the President is adamant in his campaign. He is quoted to have said recently:  “I tell you, I will triple it. ‘Pag hindi nasunod ang gusto ko, to get rid of my country (of the drug problem), you can expect 20,000 or 30,000 more (deaths),” Duterte said in Davao City after his return from an official visit to Japan according to media reports. During his campaign for the presidency, he said 100,000 people would die when he would launch his war on crime. Then in response, a police operation that identifies suspects was intensified and as many as 32 suspects were killed in a single night in Bulacan province and in Metro Manila, within the same 48 hours, another 26 people were killed. President Duterte said it was a good operation. “Thirty-two were killed in a massive raid in Bulacan. That is good. If we could kill 32 every day, then maybe we could reduce what ails this country,” he told the media in an interview.

 

These are dark and difficult days for those defending the rights of the people targeted by the death squads that seem to operate with official protection. Some are police in civilian clothes, according to some researches. It is in this atmosphere that the German Commissioner Dr Bärbel Kofler and the German Bundestag committee signed the letter of nomination. It is important to have international support and encouragement to continue the struggle and defense of the poor and the vulnerable.

 

Martial Law Then and Now

It was the first time since World War II when the people of the Philippines suffered harsh jackboot oppression and wanton plunder. President Ferdinand Marcos at the end of his term in 1972 and fearing a loss of power and influence declared nationwide martial law and abolished the Congress and vowed to continue in office. The sovereign rights of the people under the Constitution protecting their lives, liberty and property were swept away and Marcos declared himself an absolute ruler with legislative powers to rule by decree. Tyranny had arrived.

Thousands of opposition leaders, party members, journalists and outspoken critics of the corruption of Marcos’s previous years in office  were rounded up and executed or jailed. Others fled abroad and many young idealists and freedom-loving youth fled to the mountains and forests. There they formed a resistance movement called the New People’s Army based on communist ideology. It continues as a force to this day. Many innocent young people were summarily executed.

I remember in Sta. Rita Parish, Olongapo City, a young boy, 16 years old, a drug suspect who had escaped from the local jail was found by police hiding in a hillside shack. They called him to surrender, in front of the neighbors he came out and was ordered to kneel down and the police shot him in the head. It was a horrific execution of an innocent boy.  Like the murders of youth today in the war-on-drugs, no evidence is needed, just the bullet to the head or a dagger plunged into the heart by killer police, serial killers, and psychopaths high on drugs and crazed with power and impunity and highly paid for their body count. That’s how it was then and is now.

The brutal Marcos regime, responsible for as many as an estimated 20,000 murders, backed up by the Philippine National Police and Army and Police Constabulary led by General Fidel Ramos plundered the nation. Marcos and his family are allegedly responsible for billions of dollars and tons of gold plundered from the national treasury and private businesses and stashed abroad only a fraction of which has been recovered to this day.

Private businesses of the opposition and critics were confiscated and the owners killed or driven into exile and their properties taken over by Marcos cronies from which he received a percentage. Death squads spread over the nation, bodies were found on the roadside, tortured and killed. Militias went wild and vented a reign of terror on church people, priests and pastors and church workers were killed and the slogan of the campaign to persecute the church was “Be a patriot and kill a priest.” It was a time of state terror and treason. Priests were framed up with the murders of a mayor in Negros, the famous Negros Nine, three priests and six church workers put on trial for a crime they did not commit. 

Marcos also had a war-on-drugs. He cracked down on pushers and distributors and jailed thousands of young drug users and dependents. He executed in public on live television an accused Chinese drug dealer, no evidence or proof was needed to establish his guilt. That caused worldwide sensation. The oppression and jailing, torture and killing of critics without trial was a brutal legacy that brought much suffering to the Filipino people. It is being imitated today.

Sex tourism was allowed to proliferate under the regime and foreign pedophiles were everywhere a source of foreign revenue that Marcos was desperate for to prop up a faltering economy. There was the case of Rosario Baluyot, a young girl sexually abused by a foreigner, a suspected  US serviceman and she died a horrific painful death in the inadequate and discrepant Olongapo General Hospital. A broken part of a sex toy was found in her body causing severe infection from which there was no cure.

A pansy tourist was found, arrested, charged and found guilty just to cover for the US Naval Base at Subic Bay beside Olongapo City. His conviction defected from the US Navy accusations of the rampant sex abuse of poor Filipino women and children in the only industry in the city, “sex for sale.” 

When a child sex ring, composed of US Navy men abusing children as young as nine years old was uncovered by Preda social workers the regime tried to close down the child care center and deport the founder. This was the legacy too of Martial Law, a spreading sex industry turning the Filipino women and children into prostitutes for foreign customers. There was a total dependency on US military might to supply the Martial Law police and army with weapons used to suppress the Filipino people.  It was soon after the People Power Revolution drove Marcos from power that the Preda campaign to remove the bases and convert the infrastructure into an economic zone became a coalition of the willing and was a resounding success.

This legacy of Marcos remains today despite every effort by his rich family members to try  to clean up his image with a  burial in the cemetery for heroes, the declaration by President Duterte of a holiday to celebrate the birthday of Marcos and the failed effort of his son Bong-bong Marcos to get elected as vice president as partner with  Rodrigo Duterte. 

Today those who idolize Marcos are repeating history and his March of Madness and imitating the worst killing spree and atrocities of his Martial Law regime, which is now before our eyes.  We have Martial Law today in Mindanao and perhaps all over the nation soon. The voice of reason crying out for justice and an end to the killing must grow louder and persistent until peace and justice come to be.

The Killing of Children

The President is having a very successful campaign against suspected drug dealers and drug users. The killing of a 17-year old Grade 11 student,  Kian Loyd De los Santos, by police in an anti-drug operation last week during which as many as 94 people were shot dead by police was just one too many. The police claim that all the dead, including the boy, resisted arrest and fought back. However, witnesses and CCTV footage of the incident show that the boy was dragged and shot dead.  

Whatever the truth of it is, the evidence that these 94 people were all drug dealers and had resisted arrest is woefully lacking. Many in the Philippines are shocked at the news that as many as 31 minors have been shot dead during the past twelve months of the President’s war-on-drugs. The tough-talking and feared President strengthened his determination to pursue the war-on-drugs and said that it would continue relentlessly and warned drug pushers that they will face “either jail or hell." "Illegal drugs are the root cause of much evil and so much suffering that weaken the social fabric and deters foreign investment from pouring in," he said.

Caloocan Bishop Pablo Virgilio David spoke out against it and condemned the killing of Kian Loyd De los Santos. "This is one very specific case where an innocent individual, who happens to be just a boy, a Grade 11 student, you snuff out the future of a child," David said in a phone interview with Rappler on Friday, August 18. "That really crushes my heart as bishop. I cannot possibly keep quiet about this," said David, the incoming vice president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). He is one of the most outspoken bishops against the extrajudicial killings (EJKs).

The targeting of children is not unusual. The authorities look down upon them. The move by the authorities to change the juvenile justice and welfare law and reduce the minimum age of criminal liability to nine years old is still pending in the congress. In a speech to the Boy Scouts, the President said children in conflict with the law have criminals minds.

Without evidence against the suspects, they are listed by local officials and are judged guilty and arrested, jailed or even executed. The President praised the big “success” of the operation. The rule of law and due process is ignored and for many Filipinos of conscience, it is extrajudicial killing. The police vigorously deny it. Some commentators say that as many as ten thousand suspects have died in the war on drugs killed by police and vigilantes. The vigilantes, some say, are police in disguise and they are paid a bonus for every killing. This cannot be confirmed. The owners of the funeral parlors where the bodies are brought pay the police to bring them more bodies, some reports say. The families of the victims have to borrow heavily to pay for the expensive funeral. A report by Reuters last June 29 revealed that some police bring the dead bodies to hospitals as part of a cover up.   

The amazing thing is that for a so-called Catholic country that is the Philippines, surveys say the tough talking president has approval ratings as high as 80 percent of those polled. Some say many Filipinos give approval in a survey out of fear. The President who apparently enjoys wide popularity said he would kill human rights advocates too to show them what human rights violations were. Later his communications officials said he didn’t mean it.

In the Archdiocese of Dagupan, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, outgoing head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, ordered that the church bells in his archdiocese be rung for 15 minutes every day for three months to protest the killings. This is needed, he said, to arouse the people who have become “cowards in expressing anger against evil.”

“The sounding of the bells is a call to stop approval of the killings,” Villegas said in a statement read last week in churches in his archdiocese in Pangasinan province. “The country is in chaos. The officer who kills is rewarded and the slain get the blame. The corpses could no longer defend themselves from accusations that they ‘fought back,’” he said.  “Why are we no longer horrified by the sound of the gun and blood flowing on the sidewalks? Why is nobody raging against drugs that were brought in from China?” Villegas asked, referring to a huge drugs shipment that managed to pass through Manila’s ports under the watch of customs officials appointed by Duterte.

And so it is that the voices of the outspoken, vocal bishops are being heard. In Caloocan City, Bishop David organized walk for peace. In the Archdiocese of Manila, Archbishop Cardinal Tagle issued a pastoral letter that did not condemn the killings but said “We knock on the consciences of those who kill even the helpless, especially those who cover their faces with bonnets, to stop wasting human lives.”

This is a time for people of conscience to know and speak the truth, to be prophetic, to proclaim the value of every life, to stand for the truth, justice, human dignity, due process and the rule of law so that all people will be protected and safe from home invasion and the arbitrary killing of innocent people.

Suspects are not Humanity, says Justice Secretary

Small children of nine years old are to be branded as criminals and to be held responsible for childhood mistakes. Stealing when they are hungry and abandoned. Fighting back when they are abused and bullied. They cry when there is no one to feed them. What are they expected to do to survive? That’s the plight of thousands of abandoned boys and girls in the Philippines today.

According to Representative Pantaleon Alvarez, the speaker of the Lower House of the Philippine Congress, the country is crime-ridden and it can be blamed on criminals that start at nine years old. The law must be changed to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from the present 15 years old to nine years old.

The reason cited is that the children are used by syndicates to commit serious crimes because at 15 years and younger they cannot be prosecuted. This is not true. There is no evidence to support such a statement. All research and statistics point in the opposite direction, that children are not to blame for the crimes of adults. Children below 15 years old cannot discern what is unlawful.

But the congress representatives want to please President Rodrigo Duterte who believes even children are criminals. Several members of his cabinet do not agree with the lowering of the MACR and they oppose it. Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez advised the cabinet secretaries who are against it to resign if they don’t agree with the president.

Many disagree. The secretaries heading the government agencies are there to advise, support, guide, object as necessary and suggest the right and true way of good governance. When they comment on presidential proposals, they are required to be rational, study the data and science and be guided by it. They are not dummies or robots as the speaker would have them to be.

That’s why the sensible members of the Philippine cabinet, like the secretaries of the Departments of Education and Social Welfare and Development, and members of the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC), a high level council of undersecretaries, are against it.

The final position of the JJWC argues that the children are running wild on the streets and in conflict with the law because the parents are unable to support many children and local governments do not obey the juvenile justice and welfare law and provide social services and a home for them to be cared for and educated.

This is a nation with vast wealth controlled by a few. The congress mostly represents the interests of the 0.0001 percent of the population which is now over 103 million people. These mega-wealthy people own as much as 70 percent of the wealth of the nation. There are more billionaires in the Philippines than ever before and the poverty, unemployment, rural displacement and hunger is greater than ever before.

The plight of the thousands of children is very bad. Those found on the streets as young as 10 and 12 are  “arrested” or taken into “protective custody” and locked in cells with older boys. Adrian was ten year old when I found him behind bars in a single cell with thirty others older than him. It was a happy day when we got him out of that jail cell and taken to the Preda Home for Children. He told of being bullied and beaten by the older boys and being sexually abused.

Those children 15 years or younger are not held criminally responsible for stealing or other misdemeanors at present by the Philippine law. It says they need support, help and diversion programme.

The local governments are supposed to provide them with a house of hope, a place where they are protected, fed, their parents are sought and they are to get education, medical treatment and given their rights in a place that is humane and hygienic. But local governments fail to do this and they just lock them behind bars in bare empty cells 24 hours a day for months on end.

The pronouncement by the government that there would be a pause in the war-on-drugs does not seem to be real. Supposedly the suspension is for the government to clean the ranks of the police, “Who are corrupt to the core,” according President Duterte. Last week, in Santa Rita, Olongapo City, North of Manila another couple were shot to death in bed by armed men who burst into their house and shot them dead. The killers left signs calling the dead “addicts, robbers, hold-uppers, drug pushers, do not imitate them.”

The recent published report of Amnesty International claimed, according to police who spoke to them, that they were paid to kill and funeral parlors give the police a payment for every dead body brought to them for burial. Many innocent people have been killed and robbed by the rogue police, mostly the poor. The rich suffer kidnapping under the guise of drug raids. A Korean businessman was allegedly kidnapped and murdered by police inside the police headquarters in Metro Manila in October. It is claimed that gunmen and police have killed over 7,200 people since 1 July last year. When asked by media if the Amnesty International charge that the killings were crimes against humanity, the Justice Secretary Aguirre said the suspects and addicts are not humanity.

Cybersex, Crime of the Century

The photograph in itself is a kind of pornography of the wealthiest oligarchs, tycoons, money-magnets, business moguls, elite Industrialists, rogue capitalists, barons of industry and financial tyrants and heads of corporate conglomerates some ethical business people, call them what you will but words fail me. They are among the estimated some 0.0001 percent of the Philippine mega-rich that own and control the entire economy of 103 Million Filipinos.

The Philippines has 21 billionaires, according to Forbes Magazine, with a record number this year. The richest - retail and property mogul Henry Sy - has a net worth of US$13.7 billion (S$19.6 billion). They take their place among the world’s richest people, eight of whom, according to an Oxfam report, own more wealth than half the people in the world.

The Philippine tycoons stood with President Rodrigo Duterte for the photograph in the Presidential Palace last Tuesday 17 January 2017 to capture the moment for posterity. They joyfully feasted and talked business for three hours over a sumptuous meal that would have fed 200 people for a week. These are the very people that the president vowed to bring down. He may be fattening them up for the kill.

"The only way for deliverance of this country is to remove it from clutches of the few people who hold the power and money," Duterte said last 23 November 2016. The president had previously warned the telecoms corporations such as Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co and Globe Telecom to change their monopolistic ways. They are the leading Internet Server Providers (ISPs) and are allegedly in violation of the Anti-Child Pornography Law of 2009 for failing to block child pornography on their servers.

Last August 2, 2016 President Rodrigo Duterte promised he would destroy the Philippine "oligarchs.” On another occasion, he said he would destroy the corrupt business tycoons and moguls. "I am fighting a monster... Believe me, I will destroy their clutches in our nation," Duterte said at an environment summit in southern Davao City last year.

Now to the relief of the business elite, moguls and tycoons, a more compassionate, understanding, forgiving and business-friendly President has emerged during the night of feasting to welcome the “monsters” into his dining hall. Hopefully he warned them to share their vast wealth and invest in the poorer regions of the Philippines and to pay just wages.

The poor are so poor some trade in small amounts of drugs but the drug barons benefit and are untouchable. Other poor people sell their children to the cybersex operators connected to the internet through the PLDT, Sun, Smart and Globe internet servers. These criminals send live images of children being sexually abused to foreign customers around the world and collect payment at Western Union and other money transfer stations.  

Child pornography and cyber-sex involving minors is a heinous crime against the person and dignity of the child. The Philippines is becoming a leading source of these illegal images and children are being abused in the making and distribution of them. The child porn images are spread around the world through the Internet and the ISPs in every country that do not have filters and blocking technology are aiding and abetting these crimes against children.

If President Duterte is true to his word to challenge and bring the tycoons of the Philippine ruling elite to develop the country, he could start with Manny V. Pangilinan, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of PLDT, Suncellular and Smart. He and his company is bound by law to filter and block every pornography web site that carries child pornography. The 2009 Anti-child Porn Law is very clear and explicit. The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) in 2014, through Memorandum Circular No. 01-01-2014, ordered ISPs to “install available technology, program or software that will block access or filter all websites carrying child pornography materials” within 120 days from the submission of a list of these solutions to the Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography (IACACP).

They have not complied. It has been announced in the media last week that only three pornography websites containing child images are now blocked. This is an insult to the law, the government National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and Secretary of the Cabinet Leoncio (Jun) Evasco, representative of President Duterte, and to whom the commissioners must report.  There are hundreds of child pornography websites in cyberspace. The Philippine ISPs must by law install total blocking software. But they defy the law and refuse to do it in the interests of profit-making and expanding their vast wealth at the expense of the abused children.      

In the Philippines the telephone companies are violating the law by not having these filters in place as demanded by the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 otherwise known as RA 9775. They have seemingly placed themselves above it and seem to have some government officials in their pockets. In addition to the Anti-child Pornography Law, they are also allegedly violating with impunity the Public Telecommunications Policy Act of 1995 or RA 7925 and Executive Order No. 546 issued in 1979.  The tycoons are now dining with the President hoping that he will overlook their crimes of ignoring the law and exploitation and aiding and abetting the abuse of vulnerable children. The president and cabinet secretary Jun Evasco will surely hold them to account and protect the Filipino children from this horrific heinous cybercrime of child sexual abuse.

Respect for Life and Human Dignity

Bennie had a thin, hollow face, the picture of malnutrition at 22 years of age, he had never been to school for more than a few months, could not read or write and he was a one-meal man. He ate once a day. He was dressed in shorts and a dirty t-shirt. His flip-flops were worn thin. They were his only possessions. He pushed a small wooden cart along the back streets of Manila picking up discarded plastic bottles, bits of metal that fell off a jeepney or a truck. He was a discarded piece of humanity himself.

On a lucky day in a garbage bin outside the gate of a mansion, he found an old computer keyboard. Finds like these were the treasures of his long walk. That was a big day for him and he sold it at the junk shop with the other bits and pieces he picked up. He joined his fellow scavangers and together they cooked what they  found in the garbage -a plate of pagpag and a little rice. Pagpag is made from the throwaway leftovers from the plates of the diners that ended up in the restaurant’s garbage bags in the back alleyways. It is retrieved by the very poor and boiled in a big pot on the side of the road. It made an excellent meal– for the hungry poor.   

After eating his pagpag, Bennie decided he would celebrate. That night he went down an alleyway to buy a small sachet of marijuana from the local reseller named Joey who was not much better off than him. Bennie just wanted to ease the loneliness of life, the ache in his back and legs, the pain in his feet and to forget for a short while the misery of his daily search for junk and his one meal of cheap pagpag food. There was nothing else in his life.

So just imagine what happened. Bennie was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. The small pusher Joey was a target of the hit squad that very night. They cut off the alleyway and moved in on the hovel of Joey. Two of the killers stepped inside and opened fire. Bennie and Joey were hit several times; their bodies bled copious amounts of blood they died within minutes. The hit team had a signboard ready, it read:  “I’m a drug addict. I deserve to die.”That’s how they were found one hour later. It was a fast response. Imagine Bennie’s and Joey’s lives ended over a one-dollar deal.

That can be a typical scene from the war-on-drugs. There has been a lot of success in the one-sided war since June this year. Over 6000 Bennies, Joeys and others too, suspected sellers of marijuana or crystal meth dead, but no one is sure how many more. That’s about 1000 suspects killed a month.   

The advocates of the hit squad policy say it’s a big success and takes the hardship and boredom out of routine police work. It is the death penalty in action, they say. There is no need for a death penalty law because in effect we have one already by having no rule of law. 

What Bennie and Joey got and thousands more is what the advocates of the war say is a very convenient and effective method to deliver capital punishment. It swiftly bypasses the dangers of investigation, the boredom of surveillance and painstaking evidence gathering, and making dangerous arrests. Think too of the difficult case-building, the preservation of evidence and long drawn-out court trials and the difficulty to get a conviction beyond reasonable doubt. Then there are the endless appeals and finally the stay of execution.

The President knows what it is like to prosecute fruitlessly with thousands of crimes to be solved and prosecuted in a judicial system that is rife with corruption and one case can take seven years or more. He was a prosecutor in Davao City and that’s why he launched the bloody shoot-to-kill war-on-drugs.  The old methods, claim the advocates of war, never worked. Instead the elimination by summary execution outside the system has been very effective, according the supporters of the policy. And it will keep on going, no end in sight. This instant solution to crime, just one gunshot, has, it seems, an overwhelming approval of 76 percent of Filipinos. During the same period after the election, President Aquino had 71 percent approval rating and Estrada had 69 percent. Not a huge difference but they were not advocating extrajudicial killings. 

The Senate may follow the House and may pass a capital punishment law, despite all the arguments against it such as: it doesn’t deter crime, it kills innocent framed up suspects, it is anti-poor because they can’t afford lawyers, it causes cruel punishment, it is vengeance-seeking, it deprives the accused of reform, it’s against the sacred value of life and the dignity of human person. One hundred forty one nations have banned it and the United Nations also. If it is passed, it would be a legal way for President Rodrigo Duterte to kill the convicted. He wants to hang six people a day. “Restore it and I will execute criminals every day – five or six. That’s for real,” he said. Of course he was just joking. The hit squad is quicker. 

Killing a thousand people a month as is the present practice is not a cruel joke. Something sinister has been unleashed. It is cruel capital punishment seen every day. Critics say it is one monster crime to counter many little ones. It must stop so life will be respected and cherished and the lives of the suspects are given a chance to defend themselves against their unknown secret accusers, as is their constitutional right. But those rights have been suspended and the challenge to all is how to restore them. We need to call for a ceasefire and stop what is happening to the Bennies and Joeys of the Philippines.