by Daniel Long

 

While President Bongbong Marcos Jr. was giving a speech before the Australian Parliament yesterday, (February 29, 2024) an Australian senator named Janet Rice protested his speech by holding up a placard with the words “Stop The Human Rights Abuses”. Later that day, her colleagues in the Senate voted for a measure that censured Rice expressing disapproval of her “unparliamentary and disrespectful conduct”. However, the censure was symbolic as Rice suffers no consequences for her actions. Rice, with two other senators David Shoebridge and Barbara Pocock had joined the anti-Marcos protesters outside the Parliament posing with the same placard. Rice posted on X (Twitter) the photo of her stunt with the caption, “Under President Marcos Jr…There are hundreds of political prisoners and ‘anti-terrorism’ laws are used as legal cover for extrajudicial killings.” She also posted on X the video of her speech in Parliament after being censured saying, “The action I took in the house today was deliberate and it was powerful. And I did it on behalf of every Filipino person whose human rights have been abused by the governments of President Marcos and President Duterte before him.”

What an arrogant and self-aggrandizing individual. I am going to tackle the examples she gave of “human rights abuses” in the Philippines which were “red-tagging” and “extrajudicial killings”.

My first reaction to what these Australian senators did was anger. I also recalled what Bongbong Marcos, before he became President, said in a 2018 YouTube vlog about the International Criminal Court’s investigation into President Duterte’s drug war. Marcos said, “Hindi tayo papayag na ganun ang trato sa atin at saka minamata tayo nitong mga puti, (We will not allow this treatment and WHITE PEOPLE watching us.) We are a mature sovereign nation with our ways of doing things as it is not for them to judge us because we do not judge them.”

The three anti-Marcos Australian senators Rice, Shoebridge, and Pocock belong to the “Green Party” in Australia, who portray themselves as “anti-colonialists” but they, especially Rice, shame themselves with their interference in Philippine internal affairs. They believe they are true bleeding heart liberals but in reality still hold the colonialist mindset that they are superior and they alone know what is best to impose on developing countries like the Philippines. My message to them is simple – SHUT UP AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. You do not know what is happening in our country and neither should you meddle in our affairs. During the COVID crisis, Australia had one of the most brutal and longest lockdowns in the world. They had effective quarantine prison camps (declaring people sick until proven healthy) and mandated vaccines. Google “Janet Rice vaccine mandate” & she has nothing to say.

President Marcos Jr. stood up for the rights of the unvaccinated by refusing to mandate vaccines, booster shots, and redefine “fully vaccinated” to include boosters. He vowed “no more lockdowns” to return the Philippines back to normal. He defied Big Pharma’s tyrannical puppets  at the DOH (Department of Health) by lifting useless mask mandates against their recommendation.

“Red-tagging” does not exist. There is no law against it. What it really is, is unmasking the Communist Party-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) terrorist sympathizers, activists, and legal enablers (National Democratic Front (NDF). CPP founder Jose Maria (Joma) Sison himself identified the following activist groups as mere fronts who act as the legal eyes and ears of the terrorist NPA who have killed 50,000 Filipino civilians, armed personnel, and police (What about their human rights and LIVES?). League of Filipino Students Chair for UP (University of the Philippines) Diliman Kara Taggaoa was even proud that many of their alumni became NPA.

“Extrajudicial killings” of President Duterte’s drug war, which really mean “police brutality” do exist but the drug war overall was a success. The country would have been a fourth-world narco-state had President Duterte not initiated the War on Drugs. 1 million users have returned to normal lives, half of the barangays by the end of his term were declared drug-cleared, and countless men, women, and children, and communities’ were saved from drugs.

This is not to say genuine violations of human rights do not exist in the Marcos and Duterte administrations, but they should and do not define the totality of their governments. The arbitrary detention of Lorraine Badoy, whose only crime was to courageously expose and fight the communist terrorists, by the power tripping Congress last year is an example of egregious human rights abuses. Deafening silence, however, from the meddling Australian senators about that. Is that why Kabataan partylist representative Raoul Manuel applauded their anti-Marcos stunt on social media? He has to answer for Kabataan member PUP student Frances Meriveles who joined the NPA after disappearing for four years. Is there a Kabataan-NPA pipeline? What about the ‘human rights’ of Hannah Jane Cesista, UP Cebu 2023 Bar Exam passer, who was a victim of CPP-NPA brainwashing through her membership in the Anakbayan group leading to her death in an encounter with the military? “

I also have a message for President Marcos, with due respect, enough of the endless trips to the West. Stop seeking for Western and white validation. If you are doing that to redeem your family’s name, do not bother. Do not seek validation from them because in the first place, they are the ones who removed your father from power because he stood up to them. They continue to fund their propaganda machinery (Rappler, VERA Files) through the CIA (National Endowment of Democracy) to demonize your father and tarnish his legacy of independent foreign policy, food self-sufficiency, energy security, peace and order, and state-led development.

A source let us know that before you became President, you would say at the campaign headquarters many times, “the Americans removed my father, the Americans removed my father.” Compare the welcoming treatment you received in your state visit to China last year and the disrespect you received at the Australian Parliament yesterday. Forget the delusion cooked up by the anti-diplomacy saboteurs in your midst that the West will help the Philippines in any meaningful way in the South China Sea dispute, these white people are grooming us for war the same way they goaded Ukraine into war with Russia.

Why are you suddenly alarmed that there is Chinese naval presence in the disputed waters? Just last week, we conducted a joint air patrol with the United States where they sent a B52 bomber aircraft. It takes two to tango. Your sister Senator Imee Marcos recommended last July that the Philippines should only conduct joint patrols with claimant states (PH, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia) in the Spratlys. The Americans, the Japanese, and the Australians are not even claiming anything in the South China Sea, these third party entities have no business meddling in the issue nor will they help us when trouble breaks out.

Every single Filipino should be outraged. Who is colonizer Australia, to disrespect and lecture President Marcos, President Duterte, and the Philippines about “human rights abuses”? The natives of Australia, the aboriginal people, have lived on the continent for 65,000 years (National Geographic). According to University of Newcastle historian Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan, 10,000 Aboriginals were killed in 400 massacres done by European settlers. Historians Raymond Evans and Robert Ørsted-Jensen have made the controversial estimate that at least 65,000 Aboriginal Australians were killed from the 1820s to the early 1900s. Until now, the Australian government has never issued an official apology for these “human rights abuses”.

These white people should look in the mirror before pointing fingers and judging us. A friend of mine told me that these three Australian senators (Rice, Shoebridge, and Pocock) represent the minority voice and the majority of the senators clapped for BBM. Let us please not be naïve, those senators have to clap as it is protocol. Deep down, this supremacist worldview is in the heart of many Europeans. This is how they feel about Asians. Shame on the Filipinos who applauded Rice’s disrespectful stunt like good little dogs for they still possess a colonial mentality. (Original art below is from Steven Pabalinas I modified)

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s reminder for the Japanese and South Koreans last year also applies to us Filipinos. Yi said, “No matter how blonde you dye your hair, how sharp you shape your nose, you can never become a European or American, you can never become a Westerner. President Marcos has to learn his lesson that colonial mentality never pays. Asian Century now, end Western Colonialism.

   

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