![]() ![]() ![]() It allows for detention without warrant for 24 days and gives the executive vast powers to interrogate and detain anyone it deems a terrorist. The measure is the most contested law in the country’s recent history, the subject of 37 separate petitions filed before the Philippine Supreme Court asking for it to be struck down. The centerpiece of Duterte’s new machinery of repression is a sweeping Anti-Terrorism Act, rushed through Congress last June. Read more: Duterte Is Assassinating Opponents Under the Cover of the Drugs War, Rights Groups Say “It seems that the long arm of the law is reaching out to them.” The lawyer Diokno, who chairs a team of legal professionals offering pro bono services, and who himself as been attacked in one of Duterte’s televised harangues, describes the situation as unprecedented. Parlade discouraged them from having links with leftist groups and warned that this could cost them their lives. The three women are vocal on social and political issues. General Antonio Parlade, the head of a military task force against the country’s ongoing communist insurgency, made attacks on Facebook against Filipina actresses Angel Locsin and Liza Soberano, and against Miss Universe 2018, the Filipina-Australian Catriona Gray. A new law has criminalized the spreading of “false information” with up to two months in prison and a fine of one million pesos ($19,600)-a fortune to ordinary Filipinos-and at least 17 people have been subpoenaed by the National Bureau of Investigation for expressing discontent online. Philippine social media has also become fraught. Ressa continues to face a slew of tax evasion and other suits that she says are vexatious. In June, a Manila court convicted prominent journalist and editor Maria Ressa, one of TIME’s 2018 Persons of the Year, of “cyber libel,” sending more shivers through the media establishment. Robredo had called out the country’s delayed vaccination program-held up, critics say, by the administration’s lack of urgency and foresight. In a recent tirade, Duterte wished death upon Leni Robredo, the country’s vice-president (who, under the Philippine system, is chosen in a separate election and may come from a different party). The broadcasts have become a pulpit for the president’s verbal attacks against those who disagree with him. These days, they allocate the time to equally grim fare: weekly COVID-19 “updates” from Duterte, shown at the head of a table of military top brass. TV operators in the Philippines used to reserve late-night slots for crime tales and horror shows. “Now, they’ve got a crisis that allows them to tighten its grip on power.” “The regime has more tools now to crack down on people than when it started,” he tells TIME. William Hartung, the director of the arms and security program at the Washington D.C.-based Center for International Policy, says the approach is eerily similar to Duterte’s much criticized war on drugs, with its emphasis on armed enforcement and punitive measures. ![]() But they also constitute what the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet described as a “highly militarised response” to the pandemic. Undoubtedly, lockdowns have prevented Philippine hospitals from being overwhelmed. 13, 2021 -the second-highest figures in Southeast Asia. The country logged over 616,611 coronavirus cases and more than 12,750 fatalities from the beginning of 2020 to Mar. With its weak public health system, COVID-19 has presented a major challenge to the Philippines. ![]()
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