THE HAGUE – Progressive groups condemned what they described as excessive force employed by the police against the protesters in the Sept. 21 anti-corruption rallies.

In a press conference here at The Hague, the Netherlands, Sept. 22, Karapatan Secretary General Cristina Palabay said, “We were hoping that Marcos would prioritize making corrupt politicians accountable, pero inuna mo pang kasuhan ang mga kabataang nagpoprotesta.” (but they instead filed charges against the youth who joined the protests)  

According to Karapatan, at least 219 protesters were arrested by police yesterday including 95 minors and one protest marshal/paralegal officer of Karapatan who was responding to the scene when they were arrested.

“We should go back to where we started. Why are people out in the streets? Why are people angry? And to penalize them, to put them in jail, to criminalize them is not the way to go. It’s not solving the root cause of the problem” Palabay said.

Palabay reacted to Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s statement ordering “that all those who used violence during Sunday’s rallies will be held accountable.” 

“The riots were not borne out of one Molotov or one stone thrown against the police. This is years of injustice and years of pent up anger and years of looking at the politicians getting richer while the poor get poorer,” added Palabay.

Kim Berry, chairperson of Anakbayan United Kingdom, said the Sept. 21 protests show the Filipino youth’s anger. “[A]nd our anger is legitimate against a system that is corrupt and unleashes violence on the people every single day,” she said.

Berry warned the Philippine government against using the incident as pretext to intensify repression. In a Palace briefing, Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla claimed that a local terrorist group had allegedly planned to bomb the Sept. 21 protests.

“We are not terrorists for protesting. It’s our right to protest against a system that exploits us, when Marcos is pocketing money that should have been used for flood control projects and when Duterte massacred the urban poor in his drug war,” Berry said.  

Human rights lawyer Krissy Conti asserted that the people have the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. “It was the police and largely the government which have not shown maximum tolerance as required by law,” Conti said. “Police brutality has no place in civil society.”

Conti said that there should be accountabilty for abuses by the police.

International groups have also expressed solidarity with the Filipino people. 

Drew Miller, secretary general of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP), “The violence that the international community is concerned about is the violence of the Marcos and Duterte regimes against the people – resulting in killings, mass poverty and hunger in a system that funnels public wealth into private hands.”

Sadia Khan of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women in Law and Development (APWLD) said, “Authoritarianism thrives in silence. We take the spaces of international solidarity and bring stories of resistance to the frontline.”