STATEMENT OF CONDEMNATION

(19 August 2017) Humanist Alliance Philippines, International (HAPI) shall always be firmly on the side of human rights, due process, justice, and protecting the citizenry from gross abuse of power perpetuated by those in the position to do so.

In the past weeks we have seen an alarming increase of state-perpetuated human rights violations throughout the world:

In the Philippines, with its long history of human rights-centeredness, we have seen enacted an inhumane policy of state-sponsored murder in the name of a flawed and failing war on drugs, the bodies of victims bereft of justice in a court of law piling up higher and higher every day. We have seen one too many children murdered and called “collateral damage”. We have heard the police excuse that all kills were drug addicts that “nanakbo” and “nanlaban”, but earlier this week we saw an innocent 11th-grader dragged, punched in the stomach, handed a gun by the police told to fire it while running, and shot doing so.

In the USA, which once fought against the intolerant and inhumane views inherent in Nazi ideology, we have seen the resurgence of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. We saw the Head of State fail to unequivocally condemn the violence these Nazis caused in Charlottesville, which killed a woman who stood up for the sacred values their country was founded on.

And in Malaysia, once a beacon of religious moderation, a minister now uses the absence of protections in their constitution as a basis to declare atheists as non-person targets. We see now threats to hunt down peaceful atheists and apostates, with them being cited as a serious threat to the Malaysian way of life for leaving the state-sponsored religion and their lack of “faith” in it.

HAPI holds that matters of human rights transcend politics and borders. We condemn in the strongest terms any and all authority figures who show such complete disregard for the most fundamental principles of humanity. We hold them, and those who enable them, responsible for the deaths that these policies have directly or indirectly caused.

We express our solidarity with the victims and their families. We also call upon all Filipinos who belong to secular, humanist, and freethinking communities in the Philippines and elsewhere to stand together with human rights advocates in defense of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Philippine Bill of Rights, documents created in the spirit of the ideals we profess. We implore them to be vocal in their condemnation of all policies and rhetoric that seek to undermine these ideals, to take whatever action they can to affirm the worth and dignity of the human person, and to hold their governments accountable for the violation of fundamental human rights enshrined in the constitutions of all countries.

“We must win when we deserve it, by elevating reason and the dignity of the individual, loving justice and the good and the great, even dying for it.” ― José Rizal, El Filibusterismo