The US Department of State chided the government of President Rodrigo Duterte for its systemic human rights violations when it released its 2021 Country Report on Human Rights Practices on the Philippines on 12 April, claiming “credible reports that members of (Duterte’s) security forces committed numerous abuses”. The report cited unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, and arbitrary detention committed “by and on behalf of the government”.

The report said, “Significant concerns also persisted about the impunity for other security forces, civilian national and local government officials, and powerful business and commercial figures.” It highlighted problems with the independence of the judiciary, including violence, threats of violence, and unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists.

The report reflected in small part the results of UN-sponsored and other international independent investigations on the human rights violations committed by the security officials of the Duterte government since 2016. Philippine human rights alliance Karapatan, in its 2021 Year-End Report, cited that apart from the more than 30,000 victims of extrajudicial killings in connection with Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’, there were in addition 427 activists and human rights defenders assassinated by suspected Duterte security forces.

Karapatan also cited other abuses, including indiscriminate bombings of rural villages, forced evacuations and illegal arrests that victimized thousands of Filipinos, under an atmosphere of impunity. On March 29, Amnesty International pointed out that lack of accountability among perpetrators had provided the breeding ground for human rights violations to flourish under President Duterte.

Meanwhile, on 17 April, the Communist Party of the Philippines pointed out that the US State Department report is a “belated and muted acknowledgment of the fact that there are rampant cases of human rights violations perpetrated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police in the course of the bogus ‘war on drugs’ and counterinsurgency operations”.

The CPP countered, “The Filipino people must hold the US equally culpable for these rights violations… The AFP receives and buys weapons from the US government and is guided by US doctrine.”

The AFP and PNP, the CPP stressed, “have been taught by the US military in accordance with its doctrines of ‘counterinsurgency’ and ‘counter-terrorism’… the same US tactics used in its failed wars of intervention in Vietnam (Operation Phoenix) and Afghanistan (whole-of-nation approach), characterized by aerial bombings, assassinations, torture and the relentless onslaught against the civilian population and non-combatants.”

The CPP called on the Filipino people to demand an end to US military intervention in the Philippines, the abrogation of unequal military agreements with the US, and an end to US-dictated doctrine of total war against the people.