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Noting “the worsening human rights situation and increasing violence and impunity” in the Philippines, WCC’s central committee has expressed its alarm and outrage, pointing particularly to the role of the government there.
The statement cites reports that the so-called “war on drugs” has resulted in the deaths of more than 22,893 men, women, and children by police and police-backed vigilantes.” It also decries the large-scale forcible displacement of Indigenous Peoples, damage to schools, extrajudicial killings and illegal arrests in Mindinao since martial law was imposed there in May 2017.
The statement “urges the Government of the Philippines to end the culture of impunity, order the investigation of all killings, and drop the Department of Justice’s petition to declare activists as terrorists,” as well as to lift martial law in Mindinao.
