For Immediate Release
February 25, 2018
Contact: Irma Shauf-Bajar, National Chairperson, gabrielawomen@gmail.com
Filipino Women Resist President Duterte’s Fascist Regime
Today, February 25, 2018 marks the 32nd Anniversary of the EDSA People Power movement and the end of Ferdinand Marcos’s 21 years as president and dictator of the Philippines. Like Marcos, President Duterte has taken the bloody road in an attempt to impose a full dictatorship over the country, which promises more repression and killings on top of the already 14,000 people killed by his regime. GABRIELA USA stands with the Filipino people and the rapidly growing international community who demand for Duterte to stop the killings and never again to dictatorship in the Philippines!
Last week, members of GABRIELA New York and church workers were in General Santos City in Mindanao as part of an international solidarity fact-finding mission delegation. They were observing a psychosocial intervention program implemented by GABRIELA Philippines, where they are currently serving T’boli-Manobo communities who were victims of a massacre allegedly committed by military elements. The delegation was stopped at five Philippine military checkpoints and prevented from completing their scheduled activities due to the confiscation of their passports and being detained at the immigration office. There was no just cause for the detention of the delegation.
“The U.S.-Duterte regime is engaging in tactics to cover up and prevent the public from witnessing the heightened militarization and all-out war against the Filipino people. It is our duty to continue to expose and condemn the Philippine military’s ongoing human rights violations and abuses,” said Irma Shauf-Bajar, Chairperson of GABRIELA USA. “We stand with the Filipino people, our sisters and the international community in resisting militarization and demanding an end to this fascist dictatorship!”
Since U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to the Philippines in November 2017, state-sanctioned violence against indigenous people, workers, peasants, and human rights defenders has sharply escalated. GABRIELA USA views this as unsurprising, given that Trump’s visit led to deals which secured U.S.-led foreign domination of the country, including $14.3 million in U.S. military spending for Duterte’s armed forces. At the same time, U.S. military presence in the Philippines is expanding under the U.S. “counter-terror” Operation Pacific Eagle; we expect this to directly contribute to even more politically-motivated killings and repression. It is clearly the U.S.-Duterte regime that continues to attack the most vulnerable and marginalized communities with impunity – violating both the people and the nation’s sovereignty.
On this anniversary of the EDSA People Power Movement, let us continue to Rise, Resist and Unite against the fascist U.S.-Duterte regime. We urge you to join MALAYA: U.S. Movement Against Killings and Dictatorship, and for Democracy in the Philippines. Please sign this PETITION to demand to Stop the Killings and prevent a new dictatorship in the Philippines and share it widely.