Three cheers for standing up
MY latest mail includes an article written by my friend Bradley Mattes, a distinguished American leader who is president of Life Issues Institute, a grassroots organization dedicated to pro-life education, and International Right to Life Federation where my wife and I sit as board members for Asia-Pacific, and host of a daily radio commentary aired in all 50 US states on over 1,250 outlets with 18 million listeners each week.
“Three cheers to the Philippines for standing strong — once again — against the powerful and pro-abortion United Nations,” the article exclaims.
It is a tribute to Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla for standing up against some arrogant Europeans at the Human Rights Council in Geneva who wanted to impose their own degraded values on the Philippines.
These include the legalization of abortion, which destroys anywhere from 42 million to 73 million unborn children every year worldwide; same-sex marriage, which seeks to extinguish the complementarity of man and woman and destroy the very concept of child-bearing, fatherhood and motherhood; and divorce, which seeks to negate the permanence and indissolubility of marriage. All anathema to most Filipinos.
Remulla minced no words.
“Culturally, our values may conflict with many of the values that many Western countries want to impose upon us. We are not ready for that, that is our position right now… While we agree with most of the UN recommendations on human rights, some are not acceptable. It is a matter of policy whether we accept it or not, and I think I know that as a country we are not ready for that,” he said.
Remulla does not surprise. I’ve followed his career for some years now, and it is not the first time he has shown his conviction and his courage.
In 2000-2001, when President Joseph “Erap” Estrada was on the verge of being ousted in an elaborately planned coup and Remulla was his assistant executive secretary, he tried singlehandedly to save Estrada from that coup.
When everyone else around the president was ready to cave in, Remulla suggested that Estrada declare he was temporarily vacating his office because of an infirmity, and then reassume his position after a short break. The 1987 Philippine Constitution provides for this, and the lawyer in Remulla saw it. But he was badly outnumbered by those who wanted Estrada out, and Estrada himself failed to issue the needed declaration, so he lost.
This was the same Remulla, only a bit older now, who spoke for Filipino values in Geneva.
Raul Vasquez, Remulla’s undersecretary, said the challenge was formidable, coming from rich and powerful European countries. But despite all that, “I think we did very well,” he said.
At UN headquarters in New York, and various international forums, Filipinos have often been pressed by their Western colleagues to pressure their government in Manila to make its laws conform to those of Western governments.
As a former parliamentarian myself, I have seen this in my own dealings with European politicians.
Some years ago on a visit to the European Union, our Asean parliamentary delegation, led by the Speaker of Thailand, was being lectured by our German hosts in Bonn on our failure to protect our waterways and forests, and our so-called double standards in human rights. The delegates from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam listened to all this in silence, and said nothing.
But somehow we had to respond. And our leader, who spoke neither German nor English, asked me to speak for our group. So I thanked our hosts for their hospitality and expressed our admiration for their great achievement in clearing up their rivers — the Thames, the Seine and the Danube — and in preserving their hardwood forests. But I took exception to the charge that our governments practiced “double standards” when it came to human rights.
“With all due respect,” I said, “it’s here in Europe and other advanced countries where these ‘double standards’ dominate. To illustrate, the Europeans uniformly condemn the cultural practice of ‘genital mutilation’ among some African young women, but they routinely promote the mutilation of the unborn fetus (otherwise known as abortion) everywhere as a so-called human right.”
As soon as they heard this, their arrogant and condescending look dissolved into meekness and the proud lions that looked ready to devour us morphed into mice. Their hostile tone vanished, and they started talking to us about the amenities and comforts of our European visit.
The effort to compel our poor countries to adopt the questionable values of the West does not always happen at the level of bureaucrats. It happens at the highest levels of government. In 2015 in Nairobi, for instance, it was on full display at a televised meeting between US President Barack Obama and Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta. Obama asked Kenyatta to get his countrymen immersed in “gay rights” and Kenyatta told Obama that “gay rights” were a non-issue to Kenyans.
It was an eloquent and unforgettable riposte.
Recalling that, and Remulla’s short speech in Geneva, I believe we in the developing world would be well advised to develop a common language in our cultural conversation with the imperial West.