The Christians for National Liberation lauds the families of drug war victims, the people’s lawyers, and the national democratic movement for their perseverance in pursuing all avenues to hold the fascist Rodrigo Duterte accountable for his crimes against humanity and in gaining legal concessions and small but meaningful victories along the way.
They have turned the tables against the class enemies, bringing the mastermind himself before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity. While their legal battle is far from over, attacks and sabotage from Duterte’s camp are expected. Families of drug war victims and rights advocates face bureaucratic limitations in the international bourgeois court. We, thus, convey our support to the families, advocates, and Filipino people who are persistently pursuing all means available to seek justice, even braving against Duterte’s fascist machineries and troll armies, harassment tactics, and the reactionary state’s biased protection of the ruling class and perpetrators.
The CNL is witness to the “structures of sin” that the US-backed Duterte regime has unleashed, which have led to more than a million human rights violations (HRVs) since he was elected as President. For us, justice-seeking Christians, the tyrant Duterte should be tried and punished by the ICC for his crimes of genocide, war crimes, and murder charges as crimes against humanity. His victims—poor families, the toiling masses, peasants, national minorities, human rights defenders, and activists bore witness to his reign of terror. He designed, ordered, and committed the most horrendous and atrocious crimes etched in the Filipino masses’ history, but still protected by the reactionary government’s justice system. He should be held to account.
While we recognize that his crimes and “structures of sins”—his economic, political, and cultural machineries—were all born out of the semi-colonial, semi-feudal Philippine society. So as long as this remains, more tyrants and fascists will rise, and justice will remain elusive for the Filipino people. The impunity that thrived under Duterte continues today under the US-Marcos regime.
For the tyrant Duterte and his crimes against the Filipino people, the reactionary courts will never be enough to bring genuine accountability and justice for the oppressed. The CNL, in A Commentary on the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, affirmed that its commitment to the promotion and proclamation of human rights and denunciation of HRVs in the Philippines goes beyond words and is manifested primarily by means of “establishing people’s organizations and structures that aim to eradicate the social problem of poverty and its three root causes (US imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism). It is in this context that the CNL strengthens its fidelity to the Filipino people’s struggle for liberation and national democracy through the protracted people’s war.
The national democratic revolutionary movement of the Filipino people has been ceaselessly building the revolutionary political power of the masses by establishing a people’s democratic government in revolutionary bases. Revolutionary committees are continually being set up in barrios and rural areas as embryos of political organs across the country. In sharp contrast to the bourgeois justice courts of the reactionary Philippine government, the people’s courts, established by the people’s democratic government in revolutionary bases, ensure people’s fair representation and preferential option for the oppressed. These are built to ensure a just order and security among the masses and to squash counter-revolutionary efforts of the people’s oppressors and class enemies.
Through the people’s court, the Filipino masses have hope that the people could wield political power and hold their oppressors and class enemies accountable for their heinous crimes and grave rights violations. Unlike the bourgeois courts of the Philippine government, the revolutionary people’s courts put human rights and dignity to the fore. It upholds due processes based on the law of evidence. It cannot be bought with money nor bend down to those in power. As opposed to the government’s courts, slow, corrupt, and beholden to the powerful, the revolutionary people’s court is swift and just. It has held numerous people’s enemies accountable for their evil deeds and crimes. While some have taken decades, some have also taken short years before the revolutionary Filipino people held them accountable. These victories are seeds of hope and justice that the national democratic revolution continues to plant and nurture in the countryside.
While we plant the seeds of hope and justice by advancing the protracted people’s war, we journey with the oppressed and exploited people and the victims of imperialist fascism in asserting and fighting their right to justice and accountability, turning every corner to victory. Our hearts go out to the kin and families of the drug war victims, who draw closer to justice by steadfastly demanding and pursuing accountability by accessing every possible means and mechanism afforded to them. While we further demand justice and accountability from Duterte, we likewise hold the US-Marcos regime to account for all these atrocities.
We do this while exposing the inutile and protectionist mechanisms of the bourgeois justice system, now continuing under the US-Marcos regime. While fully aware that as long as the three social evils exist and the Philippine society remains a semi-colonial and semi-feudal system, tyrants and fascists will always replace one after the other. Thus, we put our faith and action towards the national democratic revolution with a socialist perspective so that we do justice for the oppressed Filipino people, and hold Duterte, Marcos Jr., their bureaucrat capitalist cohorts, and the US imperialists accountable for all their crimes and atrocities against the Filipino masses.
As people of faith, our vision is far-reaching and our commitment to justice is steadfast. We will pursue revolutionary justice through the people’s war!
Justice for Oplan Tokhang victims!
Justice for all victims of the US-Duterte regime’s human rights violations and war crimes!
Marcos Singilin, Duterte Panagutin!
Onward with the National Democratic Revolution with a socialist perspective!
