Call to Action! Sept. 21st - 46th Anniversary of Martial Law in Philippines! Stand Against Duterte's Fascism!

September 21 marks the 46th anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law in the Philippines under the Marcos dictatorship. As a US-based movement, Malaya Movement is releasing a Call to Action to mobilize our members, organizations and allies to conduct actions across the country on September 21, toward building a movement to end Duterte’s drive toward dictatorship and heightening fascism.  The Duterte administration is becoming more and more desperate to stay in power, as his policy choices purposely uplift the lives of the wealthiest while pushing the vast majority of Filipinos deeper into poverty. Instead of reversing this long-standing trend the way he originally promised, Duterte is clearly giving more priority to paying his political debts to his allies, particularly the Marcoses. Recently Duterte made a comment saying “you're better off choosing a dictator in the likes of Marcos.”At the latest State of the Nation Address (SONA), Duterte vowed to continue his “War on Drugs” by relentlessly pursuing Oplan Tokhang and further victimizing the poor urban Filipinos.  This has resulted in more than 20,000 killings reaching beyond the recorded number of extrajudicial killings under the Marcos dictatorship. In addition, Martial Law in Mindanao has only emboldened the Philippine military and paramilitary groups to terrorize the people with impunity.  Hundreds of thousands of Lumad in the region are forced to evacuate from their ancestral domain to make room for large scale mining and logging operations. Philippine human rights group KARAPATAN (Alliance for the Advancement of People’s Rights), has documented 126 extrajudicial killings (EJKs), 235 frustrated EJKs, 272 illegal arrests and detention, 930 illegal arrests without detention, 426,590 victims of forced evacuation, 39,623 cases of use of public places for military purposes, 362,355 incidents of indiscriminate firing from July 2016 to December 2017.The Filipino people are taking a stand against Duterte’s tyranny. This September, the International People’s Tribunal (IPT), a court of public opinion where concrete evidence will be presented on various human rights violations committed against the Filipino people under the U.S.-backed Duterte government, will be held this September 18-19 in Brussels, Belgium.  Its verdict will be submitted before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a decisive ruling on the regime’s crimes. In conjunction with Malaya’s call to action, a global Day of Action at Philippine embassies in major cities is set for September 21, 2018. Malaya Movement will be sending participants to join the US delegation to the IPT. We Say:

1. No to Dictatorship and Tyranny
2. End Martial Law
3. Stop the Killings
4. End US Military Aid
5. End Contractualization
6. Defend Press Freedom! Stop Silencing Journalists!
7. No to TRAIN Law
8. No to ChaCha

Call to Action!Member organizations of Malaya are also encouraged to hold their own build up activities towards September 21. Please email MalayaMovement@gmail.com with details of your action by Sept 17th, to include it in a National MALAYA Movement flyer! 

1. Hold protest actions in front of Philippine Consulates and the Embassy
2. Write Op-eds to local, national or international news outlets
3. Tweet, Call or Email your elected officials
4. Support fundraising efforts for the US delegation attending the IPT - Paypal
5. Publicize the final verdict of the IPT to the general public, Congressional reps and Philippine Consulates
6. Push to reach 5,000 signatures for the Malaya Petition