BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
MEMBERS of the police and military allegedly get latitude to kill and abduct by a grateful ruling elite who need death squads and killers in uniform to protect their corrupt business interests from investigators and rights advocates.
The ruling elite have a money-making system for themselves that leaves 16 million Filipinos in dire poverty. Who else would benefit from this state policy to silence dissent?
It is not communism the elite fear but the revelation of the truth. Hundreds of journalists have been killed, too. Did Jesus not say the truth will set you free? That is free to speak the truth, free from fear, injustice and poverty, free to live a happy life.
The Asian Forum for Development and Human Rights has claimed that since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. came to power in June 2022, the number of enforced disappearances, abductions and arbitrary arrests has grown.
In August 2023, prosecutors from the Department of Justice dismissed charges against 17 police officers over the killing of nine labor organizers. The case was brought by the wife of Emmanuel Asuncion, a labor leader who was killed with eight others in March 2021 during a police operation in Central Luzon.
The murder of radio journalist Percival Mabasa, better known as Percy Lapid, in October 2022 apparently followed his on-air criticism of high government personalities. His confessed assassin has been sentenced to 16 years in prison, along with four others, but the mastermind has not been identified and charged. Longtime activists James Jazmines and Felix Salaveria Jr. are believed to have been abducted by state forces last August.
Human rights group Karapatan has also reported on the disappearance of environmentalist Rowena Dasig, who was released from police detention on August 22 after she was acquitted of illegal possession of firearms.
In August 2023, teenagers John Francis Ompad and Jemboy Baltazar were shot dead by police in Rizal province and Navotas, respectively. The following month, human rights lawyer Maria Saniata Liwliwa Gonzales Alzate was shot dead by a death squad in Bangued, Abra province.
All these met their deaths, speaking and working for justice. It seems evil forces wish to eliminate them and silence those who work for the greater good. Who would be killed next?
We need faith that will move mountains of evil and replace them with goodness and convince people that the power of good will win./PN
