Statement | August 19, 2025
The Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) denounces the Philippine government’s shameless hypocrisy in hosting the Asia Pacific Regional Conference on International Humanitarian Law (IHL) while committing systematic, state-perpetrated violations of the very law it claims to champion.
From 11 to 14 August 2025, the Marcos Jr. administration parades itself before diplomats in Makati, claiming that “lasting peace is inseparable from strict adherence to IHL” through the so-called National Action Plan for Unity, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD). The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) boasts of “restoring conflict-affected communities” and “ensuring human dignity,” even citing UN data to condemn alleged IHL violations by the New People’s Army. But no amount of selective outrage can erase the reality that the state itself is one the country’s worst violators of IHL—weaponizing counterinsurgency to attack the very communities it claims to protect.
Karapatan’s figures as of June 2025 are damning: 129 extrajudicial killings, 15 enforced disappearances; 288 illegal arrests; 67,024 incidents of firing; 51,206 bombings; and 45,097 forced evacuations. Rural areas—home to peasants, indigenous peoples, and development workers—are hardest hit. Red- and terror-tagging have fueled 571 forced or fake surrenders and over 10 million cases of threats, harassment, and intimidation. In urban areas, from 2022 to 2023, extrajudicial killings rose by 26%, enforced disappearances nearly tripled, indiscriminate firing surged by 66%, and bombing victims skyrocketed by 766%.
The People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS) reports that peasants bear the brunt: 86 out of the 119 extrajudicial killings, and 7 out of 14 enforced disappearances under Marcos Jr. are farmers. Nineteen aerial bombings and artillery attacks have been documented, affecting over 48,000 people—14 bombings in 2024 alone—alongside rampant hamletting and de facto martial law in the countryside. Just last week, bombs rained over Brgy. Maguibay in Quezon, and soldiers killed a civilian in Occidental Mindoro. Fact-finding missions are being harassed; humanitarian aid is obstructed.
Marcos Jr.’s IHL posturing also masks his government’s alignment with US military objectives—expanding EDCA sites, hosting Balikatan war games, building U.S. naval and missile facilities—while refusing to condemn U.S.-backed Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Such complicity reveals that this administration’s “peace” agenda is inseparable from foreign military interests and global double standards.
Meanwhile, local repression mirrors global silence: NGO’s bank accounts are frozen under trumped-up terror financing charges, environmental defenders and church workers are criminalized, and political prisoners—many elderly or ill—languish in squalid jails, with at least 11 dying in custody under Marcos Jr. This is not IHL compliance; it is the systematic dismantling of civic space and the institutionalization of impunity.
This conference is not a sign of moral leadership. It is a stage-managed cover for ongoing atrocities, a diplomatic smokescreen for a state that has made the Philippines the deadliest country for peasants in Asia and among the deadliest for environmental defenders worldwide.
We demand:
- An immediate halt to aerial bombings and all military operations targeting civilian communities.
- The release and full exoneration of all political prisoners.
- The dismantling of NTF-ELCAC and repeal of repressive counterinsurgency frameworks and laws.
- The restoration of civic space and full protection for people’s organizations and humanitarian missions.
- Accountability for all state-perpetrated IHL violations, past and present.
Until these demands are met, no number of conferences, speeches, or carefully crafted press releases can wash the blood from this government’s hands. ###