Imagine you are the presdient of a corrupt government ruling a third world country where 70% of the population live in poverty. Would you, like Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, spend $20,000 (1 million pesos) on one dinner in New York? If not, good on you, and good luck. If so, then you’d better expect people to be angry. Real angry. They’ll probably take it to the streets, now stronger than ever. But chances are, you’d probably also use violent police force to disperse protesters while deflecting responsibility for your tasteless indiscretions.

This is what happened to student protesters in the Philippines just a couple of days ago. Read about this latest instance of state repression in Anakbayan L.A.‘s press release after the jump.

AnakBayan Los Angeles denounces state-sponsored attacks on the youth and calls for an end to “Glo-ttony”

Los Angeles – Filipino youth of AnakBayan Los Angeles stand with our sisters and brothers in the Philippines from the League of Filipino Students (LFS), Anakbayan, Student Christian Movement of the Philippines (SCMP) and College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), who joined forces yesterday to protest President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s shameless shelling out of US$40,000 (Php 37 Million) on extravagant dinners and hotel stays during her recent US visit. Enraged by the audacity of Arroyo to abuse public funds for her selfish gluttony while more than 4.7 million families are barely making ends meet, two hundred or so youth stormed the gates of the Malacañang (Philippine Presidential Palace).

What happened next? The pictures are telling – horrifying images of youth being kicked in the face, dragged by their hair and beaten to the ground by forces from the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Presidential Security Group (PSG). The photos and video footage from yesterday’s rally are a blunt slap in the face to those who still claim that the Philippine government is not capable of inhumane acts such as the abduction and torture of Melissa Roxas. Twenty youth and students of the University of the Philippines (UP) and Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) were brutally handled and arrested, many of them are as young as 16 years old.

AnakBayan Los Angeles is outraged by these acts of state-sponsored violence under the Arroyo administration. It was like a nightmare repeat of the peaceful May Day demonstration of 2006, when the cops turned MacArthur Park, Los Angeles into a war zone: shooting and wielding their batons with no regard for who was present, young or old. The police directly assaulted two of our own members as they tried to assist others. Such brutality is by no means an isolated case of law enforcement gone awry.

In the last four years alone, the Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project has counted 414 extra-judicial killings of Filipinos (1). It is estimated that over 1,000 extrajudicial killings by the military have taken place since Arroyo took office in 2000. At least 92 are journalists who dared to report the truth about Arroyo’s injustices against the nation.  According to the Mindanao Examiner, “By the time she steps down, Arroyo’s watch will have seen a death toll accounting for more than 60 percent of the journalists murdered since the supposed democratic restoration of 1986 and almost twice that under the 14-year Marcos dictatorship.”(2) The police brutality at yesterday’s rally is another reminder that the state deliberately intends to quell the people’s right to collectively voice their opinions on political issues.

When the Philippines signed onto the United Nations Development Programme, it was making a false commitment to “peace and security, good governance, and attention to the most vulnerable.”(3)  Since then, Arroyo has lied in her annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) about keeping this promise. Two former government officials have already asserted that “the Philippines will not achieve [the] majority of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).”(4) With the justice system serving only Arroyo’s interest to stay in power, it is no surprise that the rest of the country suffers greatly.

The US in the perfect position to help the Philippines work toward the MDG goals. However, US President Obama entertained Arroyo’s pleas to strengthen US-Philippine relations while making no mention of her abhorrent track record of human rights abuses, including the abduction and torture claims of US citizen Melissa Roxas. Considering that a large portion of the US’ aid to the Philippine government enables these crimes, we must hold Obama accountable as well.

AnakBayan Los Angeles joins our sister organizations in the Philippines calling for Filipinos around the world to expose the violence of yesterday’s state-sponsored attacks and to demand an immediate investigation of the police’s violations of their rights. We support Kabataan Partylist Rep. Raymond Palatino’s resolution calling for an immediate investigation of those PNP and PSG personnel involved. We cannot allow the Arroyo regime to sweep these abuses under the rug. It is high time that Filipinos take a stand against widespread crisis and poverty in the Philippines by putting an end to Gloria’s regime and its “glo-ttonous” ways.

(1) http://www.rightsreporting.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6688&Itemid=130
(2) http://www.mindanaoexaminer.com/news.php?news_id=20090726045911
(3) http://www.undp.org.ph/?link=4
(4) http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/07/28/09/rps-mdgs-set-back-global-recession
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