Open season on dev’t workers, activists

Around 6 p.m. last Feb. 7, development worker Rogina Quilop was illegally detained by members of the Central Intelligence Detection Group in Bacolod City. Quilop is an officer of the Center for People’s Resources and Services (CPRS), a nongovernment organization that provides disaster response and other socioeconomic services to marginalized groups in Negros island.

Quilop is the latest in the long list of development workers under threat from the government and its security forces. Under President Duterte’s term, we were hopeful that attacks on the Filipino peoples’ right to development, as well as the threats on the lives of development workers, will stop. We had hoped that development organizations such as CPRS can continue with their work safe and unmolested, providing socioeconomic projects and services to the most marginalized people in the country. We were fervently hoping for this, especially since President Duterte had shown his willingness to enter into peace negotiations with the National Democractic Front (NDF) and Moro liberation groups.

Yet even during the peace negotiations and the separate, unilateral ceasefire declarations made by both the Duterte administration and the NDF, killings, threats and intimidation targeting development workers and activists continue. Since January 2017, six development activists have already been killed, three of them lumad from Mindanao. The right to development of workers, farmers, indigenous peoples and other marginalized Filipinos was being trampled on despite the fact that the peace talks were in progress.

Mr. Duterte’s recent declaration of an “all-out war” against the Communist Party of the Philippines now puts the lives of development workers even more in danger. It is open season again on red-baiting, hunting-down and killing of development workers and activists whose only aim is to help our countrymen and women who are most in need. Because development workers are now threatened again, socioeconomic projects (e.g., indigenous schools which provide the much-needed development assistance to the poorest of our fellow Filipinos) are now in danger of being stopped. And the present administration has so far failed to deliver in full the promises it has made.

We, development workers, urge the Duterte administration and other government officials to continue with the peace negotiations with the NDF, instead of forging on with the anti-insurgency war that has already affected the lives of millions of Filipinos. We call on the government and its military officials to respect the rights of development workers and the right to development of our countrymen and women. We further urge President Duterte to support socioeconomic projects and initiatives that bring relief to our fellow Filipinos, instead of placing these projects and services at risk.

Hunting down development workers is not the answer to our country’s woes. Only peace, based on justice, can move this country forward.

RENMIN CRISANTA ABRAHAM-VIZCONDE, spokesperson, Assert Socio-Economic Network of the Philippines, ascent.secretariat@gmail.com