By Felix Poon
AsAmNews Intern
In Boston this past Saturday, roughly 20 people sat in foldable chairs enjoying noodles and fried spring rolls as they listened to the Boston Pilipinx Education, Advocacy, and Resources (PEAR) organizers report back on last week’s protests against Philippine President Duterte and his State of the Nation Address.
AsAmNews was present to hear PEAR organizers present their takeaways from the July 22nd nationwide protests, including their direct participation in the New York City protest outside the Philippine Consulate General’s office.
PEAR organizers opened the report-back event with a land acknowledgement to recognize the historically Wampanoag lands on which the event was taking place, followed by a brief history of the Philippines.
The organizers proceeded to launch into a point-by-point rebuke of Duterte’s policies and actions that they called “anti-people” and human rights abuses. Chief among their grievances is the rising death toll from Duterte’s “War on Drugs,” which the Washington Post reports is anywhere from 6,600 to over 27,000.
PEAR organizers said the youngest casualty among them was just three years old, referring to Myca Ulpina, who was shot dead on June 30th during a police raid targeting her father, according to Human Rights Watch.
They also condemned the extrajudicial killings which have been documented by human rights groups and journalists, citing the killing of fourteen men earlier this year as an example. US News reported that Philippine police claimed the men were suspected communist rebels, but activists say they were innocent farmers.
PEAR organizers were equally critical of Duterte’s less gruesome policies. They aired grievances against the shuttering of 55 indigenous peoples’ schools due to the alleged teaching of anti-government ideologies, against Duterte’s cozy relationship with Beijing and lack of action in the wake of the “Reed Bank crisis” in which a Chinese vessel sank a Philippine fishing vessel, and against comments Duterte made about the sex industry in Boracay in which he said, “Boracay Island is just the beginning, and the girls there, the foreigners are waiting for you, gentlemen, to visit the place. They’re all on the beach, sunbathing. You are invited to – I have not been there.”
Critics, including Gabriela Women’s Party representative Arlene Brosas, called Duterte’s comments sexist and say they ignore the harm toward young women who are vulnerable to human trafficking and abuse, the Philippine Star reported.
After making their case for ousting Duterte, PEAR organizers pitched several reasons why Pilipinx in Boston and their allies should care about these events. They pointed to the Pilipinx diaspora in Boston, including large numbers of nurses, domestic helpers, and other overseas workers they say migrate to Boston for work as a result of failing Philippine government policies. They called out U.S. tax dollars that went to the Philippines as military aid, including 193.5 million U.S. dollars in 2018, an amount that doesn’t include arms sales and donated guns and ammunition of unreported worth, according to Liberation News.
Anissa Abdel-Jelil, a graduate student at Harvard, attended the PEAR report-back event. “I think that folks up here did a fantastic job of bringing people together in the name of issues that impact us all,” she said.
Abdel-Jelil told AsAmNews what stood out most to her were the organizers’ calls to “stop the killings” and “stop the human rights abuses.”
She appreciated that they linked tax-payer dollars directly to the killings. Abdel-Jelil said, “It’s a way of highlighting the ways in which U.S. citizens are complicit in those killings, and [the organizers] did a really fantastic job of being like, these are ways that you can plug in [and take action].”
Activist and organizer Kayla Paraiso was one of the presenters at the report-back event, and participated in the July 22nd protest in New York City. “It was wild,” she said. “They were expecting around 200 to 300 people, but because of the torrential downpour, it was only 100.
“But even though it was a lot less than was expected, it was super powerful just to be in community with so many other radical Pilipinx [people] who are organizing for human rights … in the Philippines.”
The protest was held outside the Philippine consulate during rush hour. “There was a big mural that was right next to the consulate door,” Paraiso said, “that symbolized the issues going on in the Philippines between U.S. imperialism, and Chinese invasion. [There were] chants like tama na, sobra na, people power na, which means roughly like ‘enough is enough, it’s too much already, we need people power.’”
Dale Maglalang is a Boston College graduate student who protested alongside Paraiso. He described the protesters as an intergenerational and racially diverse group. “It wasn’t just Filipinos that were there,” he said, noting Black, Latinx, and White allies that were present, as well as younger children in strollers and older people.
“Being in New York, it was very dramatic with the pouring rain, and busy … it was very lively,” Maglalang said.
The most memorable part for Maglalang was hearing Paraiso speaking on behalf of Boston PEAR and connecting events in Boston with the bigger picture. “Oftentimes when we hear about Filipino experiences, it’s either very West Coast,” Maglalang told AsAmNews, “or when we talk about East Coast, we only think of New York and New Jersey, [we] forget about these [other] areas where there are Filipinos … you don’t hear about their experiences and their stories as much. So it was important to hear about Boston.”
Maglalang and Paraiso said that passersby were generally supportive of their cause, and that people from a nearby protest against Puerto Rican Governor Rossello even joined them and chanted with them in solidarity.
Approval ratings for Duterte remain high, above 80% according to Rappler. Supporters of President Duterte say that the Philippines has benefited from Duterte’s policies by seeing a reduction in drugs and crime. A search on Facebook turns up a number of “Diehard Duterte Supporters” groups, also known as DDS, who promote this narrative. These groups say that they are countering mainstream media to “educate the Filipino people” against “misinformation and destabilization.”
Maglalang and Paraiso countered the narrative put forth by DDS. “We hear that the streets are more safe … but safe for who? They’ll say that the Philippine economy is improving, but improving for who?” Maglalang said, implying that poor people and indigenous people suffer in the end.
“If you’re so concerned about the drug usage in the country,” Paraiso said, “then set up actual rehabilitation programs, rather than extrajudicial killing squads that you’re sending through the city.”
AsAmNews reached out to the New York Philippine Consulate General multiple times for comment about the protests and Duterte’s policies, but did not hear back as of the time of publication.
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