International Organization Condemns Blocking of its Website by Duterte’s NSC, NTC

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) condemns the recent memorandum issued by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to all internet service providers dated June 8, 2022, ordering the immediate blocking of the ILPS website, along with 27 others. Last June 6, the National Security Council released a letter listing the websites “found to be affiliated to and are supporting terrorists and terrorist organizations.”

Without basis and due process, the National Security Council through this order has arbitrarily labeled the ILPS as a ‘terrorist organization’. The NSC letter signed by National Security Adviser and Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) Vice Chairperson Hermogenes Esperon Jr., justifies this brazen rights violation through the ATC resolution designating the Communist Party of the Philippines, CPP Central Committee Members, New People’s Army and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines as ‘terrorists’. More than a cheap tactic of guilt by association, this directive is also meant to curtail the Filipino people’s right to free speech and to information.

“This is not the first time that the ILPS has been targeted and labeled as ‘terrorist’ or associated with ‘terrorist organizations’by the Duterte government. This is no longer a surprise from a desperate regime bent on covering up its crimes against the people and preventing the exposure of such in the international scene. Last September 2021, a pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) authorized the court’s Office of the Prosecutor to open an investigation into Duterte’s crimes against humanity, largely committed as part of his war on drugs, including atrocities in Davao City. The NSC order is a last ditch effort to silence criticism and prevent the people to speak up against these crimes”, ILPS General Secretary Liza Maza said.

In its 20 years of existence, the ILPS, with a membership of over 400 people’s organizations across the globe, has been actively campaigning to defend and protect peoples’ human, democratic and collective rights whenever and wherever these rights are violated.

In the Philippines, the peoples’ mass organizations and the broad opposition critical to Duterte’s corrupt, repressive and anti-poor regime subservient to foreign interests are routinely harassed and subjected to various forms of state repression, violence and terrorism.

“By vilifying its growing number of critics as “terrorists” or “supporters of terrorism”, the Duterte government is actually intensifying dissent among the Filipinos who are geared to solidify resistance against the incoming Marcos Jr.-Duterte government”, Maza ended. ###