Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez is quite right. To be of any use, any discussion or debate on terrorism and terrorists — specifically to determine if an incident in which dozens of people are killed is an act of terrorism or not — can only be meaningful if the discussants are talking about the same thing. That…
If those who fear martial law are “living in the past,” it is because much of that past, with or without martial law, is still very much in the present. Human rights defenders are still under threat, and farmer leaders, indigenous people, protesters, and political activists harassed and even killed, even as a brutal “war…
If the war between the armed forces of the Government of the Philippines (GPH) and those of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) officially and finally ends as a result of the peace talks between these adversaries, Rodrigo Roa Duterte will secure a place in history as the most effective president the Philippines…
Is President Rodrigo Duterte preparing a coup d’etat à la Marcos against the Republic and himself as a democratically elected president? It was a joke, but like Mr. Duterte’s other off-hand remarks and past one-liners, it had an edge of seriousness in it. Announcing that he would appoint Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief…
The Philippine delegation to the third cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) co-chaired by Senator Alan Peter Cayetano and Deputy Executive Secretary for Legal Affairs Menardo Guevarra has a credibility problem. Its name is Rodrigo Duterte. The UNHRC is looking into the Philippine human rights record…
The White House has confirmed that President Donald Trump has invited President Rodrigo Duterte to visit the United States. The invitation has provoked criticism from human rights groups, among them Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has been unrelenting in its condemnation of the toll in lives of Mr. Duterte’s “war” on drugs. It is widely…
Fear more than envy drives much of the media and the middle class’ insult-laden rants and self-righteous outrage over the occupation of idle National Housing Authority (NHA) housing projects in Bulacan by the urban poor group Kadamay (Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap — literally, gathering of mutually supportive poor). Even the news reports in the corporate…
He’s the commander-in-chief of the “war” on drugs and drops the word “kill” so often some think that’s the limit of his English vocabulary. He’s the last person in these isles of violence one would expect to be a pacifist. But he sounded like one last April 9. Speaking at the Mount Samat National Shrine…
In 1987 Corazon Aquino filed a libel complaint against the late columnist Luis Beltran for saying that she hid under her bed during a coup attempt by military goons who thought her soft on communism. She went on to break precedent by testifying against him in court, before a judge who was her appointee. Her…
The Philippine National Police (PNP) says that “only” 1,398 individuals have been killed in the course of the Rodrigo Duterte regime’s “war” on the illegal drug trade out of a total of 6,011 killings in the country from July 1, 2016 when Mr. Duterte began his watch as President, until March 24, or a little…
The argument that such values as human rights and the right to life are alien to Asian culture and impositions from the West, is not new. But not since the Martial Law period (1972-1986) and only recently has any Filipino functionary or politician demanded that other countries refrain from criticism of the policies and acts…