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(We yield this space to the statement of the Ecumenical Voice for Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines due to its timeliness. – Ed.)
WITH as many as 20,000 arrested in previous weeks for loitering as tambay (which includes minor alleged infractions such as drinking or smoking in public, being shirtless, or sleeping in public places), the escalation of attacks on the poor is apparent. Meanwhile, Martial Law in Mindanao continues to buttress conditions for intensified military offensives and police operations, fueling and sustaining violations of human rights through drug-related and political killings, extrajudicial killings, threats, harassment, and militarization of local communities.
The attacks on missionaries can be understood from this same viewpoint – as the human rights advocates that the President both fears and despises as objectors to his widespread wars. The government has made the streets run with blood in the so-called “war on drugs” where tens of thousands have been executed in poor communities by police and hit squads; it has also brought the destruction of Marawi City and forced the entirety of Mindanao into Martial Law. With rampant violations of human rights, especially in poor communities, missionaries who continued their ministries of listening and responding to the stories of victims of human rights violations in Mindanao are under attack.
Roman Catholic missionary Sister Pat Fox of Australia continues to battle an “undesirable alien” deportation case after she participated in a fact-finding mission in Mindanao. United Methodist missionaries Tawanda Chandiwana of Zimbabwe has been held in detention since May 9, 2018 and Adam Shaw of the United States has found securing documents both to continue his missionary work in the country as well as papers to simply leave the country difficult; both of these missionaries were detained for several hours at a police check point in February 2018, as they returned from an International Solidarity Mission to the area of Lake Sebu, South Cotabato where a massacre of indigenous people has occurred.
United Methodist missionary Miracle Osman of Malawi has also had her passport confiscated by the Bureau of Immigration in Davao City, Mindanao, seemingly under similar pretenses.
Under closer scrutiny, the administration’s attacks on missionaries serve several important purposes for a creeping dictatorship. The government is able to demonstrate its “strong arm” against foreigners after international criticism of the widespread human rights violations and extrajudicial killings. This well-established method of conditioning the public for authoritarian rule also includes attacking sectors of the media and the Church (furthered by attacking missionaries).
Attacks on missionaries are best seen as part of a rising tyranny in the Philippines. As such, the people, with the support of peace and freedom-loving people around the world, must shine the spotlight on rampant human rights violations being exacted on indigenous and Moro peoples, farmers and fisherfolk, urban poor, youth, and other marginalized sectors.