Hundreds of Iloilo youth and students led by progressive youth groups are joining today’s International Human Rights Day mobilization in Iloilo City to protest the bloody human rights record of the Aquino administration.

“President Noynoy ‘Amalayer’ Aquino recently claimed that there are no human rights violations in the country. It is all ‘leftist propaganda,’ said the President. Today, as we mark the 64th International Human Rights Day, we are here in the streets to denounce this blatant lie,” said Kabataan Party-list Panay Spokeswoman Charmane Chin.

The youth leader said that the Aquino regime is resorting to human rights violations against its critics instead of addressing the people’s just demands like a sufficient budget for education and social services, humane wages and decent livelihood, a stop to oil and commodities price hikes, etc.

“The counterinsurgency program Oplan Bayanihan, like its predecessors, still does not differentiate between legal activists and armed revolutionaries,” said Chin. She also added that oppressive laws like the Cybercrime Law are being proposed to silence its critics.

The human rights alliance Karapatan has documented 129 victims of extrajudicial killings, 2,481 cases of violent dispersals of rallies, 467 cases of illegal arrests and detention, and over 400 political prisoners under the Aquino regime.

Meanwhile, Anakbayan-Panay Spokesperson Bryce Bosque lamented that there is still no justice for the victims of the Ampatuan Massacre, the Hacienda Luisita Massacre, and other human rights violations under the Arroyo regime.

 “On top of ‘Amalayer Aquino’s own bloody record, violators like ‘the butcher’ Major General Jovito Palparan kidnapped and tortured missing student activists Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan in 2006 are still at large,” said Bosque.

He also observed that human rights violations against the youth and students are on the rise, citing the recent case of the illegal arrest and detention of UP student Maricon Montajes and the death threat against UP Student Regent Cleve Arguelles.

“The bloody human rights record of ‘amalayer’ Aquino refutes his lies. There is no ‘matuwid na daan’ under a rotten social system that generates poverty, inequality, injustice, and crisis for the ordinary people,” he said.

League of Filipino Students-Panay Spokesman JC Alejandro also condemned the systematic “red-baiting” campaign to maliciously label the critics of the Aquino regime’s anti-people programs and policies as “communists” and “armed rebels.”

Alejandro exposed that a certain Kaagapay group has been forwarding a text message to students of the West Visayas State University and the University of the Philippines Visayas discouraging them from joining today’s protest action and maliciously red-baiting progressive youth groups.

 “We condemn this red-baiting because this is used to justify human rights abuses against members and supporters of progressive groups that are engaged in legal and unarmed struggle and operate within the bounds of the law,” said Alejandro.

He said that while his group does not advocate armed revolution, he explained that the ongoing armed conflict between the government and revolutionary groups like the CPP-NPA-NDF has persisted for 44 years because of the government’s inability and unwillingness to address the root causes of the armed conflict, such as landlessness, social injustice, widespread poverty, backwardness and intense oppression.*