(We yield this space to the statement of the church-based group Promotion of Church People’s Response due to its timeliness. – Ed.)
FOR more than a year, we have undergone restrictive and even toxic lockdown measures, under the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Philippines has had the longest and perhaps the harshest lockdown, beginning March 15, 2020, which has not adequately curbed the surging of cases of COVID-19.
The Promotion of Church People’s Response (PCPR) is dismayed over government mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early months of the lockdown, we have seen our streets peppered with police in full battle gear, where they even brought out tanks and long firearms to intimidate the population. Seemingly focused on shooting or apprehending quarantine violators, they failed to demonstrate that the real enemy and threat is not the people but the burgeoning disease caused by a novel coronavirus.
Under such overbearing lockdowns, we watched the weakening of the already fragile Philippine economy. Blatant human rights violations spread fear and the militarized response crippled civil liberties. Heavy-handedness by authorities led to massive unlawful arrests during lockdown for protocol violations, detaining people instead of easing and assisting them to safety. Filipinos were blamed as lacking discipline and called “pasaway,” when they should have been educated on the real causes of transmission. Without mass testing for the virus, death tolls from the COVID-19 skyrocketed and many of our hospitals reached their full capacities and people were again only advised to stay under lockdown.
Complicating matters, police and military operations were engaged in communities. There were death-before-dawn search warrant extravaganzas resulting in extrajudicial killings. Raids of offices and houses of “red-tagged” organizations, community leaders, and activists also resulted in the illegal arrests used fabricated evidence of many. Killings related to the so-called “drug war” also did not wane, as police operations were in full swing even in the thick of the global health crisis. Over the past year, civic spaces also constricted with the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 on July 3, furthering basis for warrantless arrests and prolonged detentions and violating the constitution of the Philippines.
To what depth have we descended in this long year of misery?
The government’s fear-mongering, inaction and misplaced priorities has bled dry the coffers and most Filipinos. The poor have been pushed into even deeper poverty. Amidst the apathy and ineptitude of the government, more and more people going hungry and becoming desperate. This only increases their vulnerability to contracting the virus. Under massive joblessness and widespread crisis many feel hopeless and disgusted by the piecemeal and ineffective band-aid solutions. Especially given the unprecedented powers and funds at the disposal of the government for social amelioration and pandemic response, we have to question where all the money has gone.
This unprecedented global pandemic has only further unmasked the treacherous leadership whose tough words do not deliver the needed public health responses. A year has already passed under this pandemic and we are still in a quagmire of uncertainty, full of false and empty promises.
In these troubling times, hope must be found in the people’s collective action. In working together we can help communities to assess the challenges they face and overcome this dreaded pandemic. Our hope in not in the president or in the government but in the persistence of the people. Now, more than ever, we have the “sambayan” to carry on: we find respite by leaning on each other’s shoulders and courage to work together to heal our land, with God’s help.
