Rights violations decried

DAVAO CITY—Human rights advocates and militants decried anew the Duterte administration’s alleged human rights abuses as they began commemorating the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution that toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos 32 years ago.

A human rights summit on Thursday and an “Interfaith Unity Walk for Life and Human Dignity” on Friday at Freedom Park were expected to draw protesters from various parts of Mindanao to President Duterte’s hometown, said Jerome Succor Aba of Suara Bangsamoro.

“Our concerted action as Mindanaoans concerned for human life and dignity is urgently needed,” Aba said.

From June 2016 to December 2017, human rights groups have recorded 123 politically motivated killings in addition to 408 cases of fabricated charges against community leaders and activists.

There have also been 57 incidents of aerial bombardment of communities and forced evacuations of more than half a million people in Mindanao, Aba said.

“Behind the statistics are harrowing stories of victims, kin, and survivors of massacres, extrajudicial killings, displacements, and circumventions of civil liberties and other fundamental freedoms,” he said. —ALLAN NAWAL