$1.5-B US aid to promote human rights cited

A Filipino-American advocacy group yesterday lauded the passage by both US houses of Congress of an act that will help Indo-Pacific countries, specifically the Philippines, to promote the values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law through a $1.5-billion annual funding.

US-based immigration Filipino lawyer Rodel Rodis, president of the national advocacy group US Pinoys for Good Governance (USPGG), described the passage of the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (S.2736) on Wednesday as a “morale booster” and “a Christmas gift” to human rights defenders, journalists and civil society groups in the Philippines and other states in Asia that are persecuted by their governments.

Once signed into law by US President Donald Trump, the new legislation will appropriate a $1.5-billion security assistance annually to Asian countries, including the Philippines, to help counter the Chinese government’s economic bullying and military aggression in the region.

Out of this amount, the new law specifically offers $210 million annually in financial assistance to civil society groups, universities, multilateral institutions and non-government organizations to promote human rights and the rule of law in the Indo-Pacific nations.

Rodis said geopolitically, the law will send a stern warning to Chinese President Xi Jinping to end his imperial dreams in Asia.

Likewise, the law, according to Rodis, will also have direct bearing on the Duterte administration’s alarming human rights records resulting from his brutal war against illegal drugs in the country.

The new US legislation, Rodis added, has found “unacceptable human rights developments” in the Philippines with “continued disturbing reports of extrajudicial killings” – alongside Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people and the Chinese government’s massive forced disappearance, “omnipresent surveillance” and lack of judicial due process.

Rodis also said the “powerful” legislation also calls on the American president to “impose target financial penalties and visa ban sanctions” on human rights violators and persons who “engage in censorship” of the news media in the region.

Section 408 of the law urges Trump to “terminate, suspend, otherwise alter… economic assistance to any country that has engaged in serious violations of human rights or religious freedoms.”

The Philippine National Police was identified under the US legislation’s Section 201e as having no counternarcotics funding assistance unless the Duterte administration implements a counternarcotics approach that is “consistent with international human rights standard, including investigating and prosecuting individuals who are credibly alleged to have ordered or covered up extrajudicial killings.”

Rodis said more than 25,000 Filipinos, mostly poor suspected drug dealers and suspected drug users, have been reported to have been killed over the past two years under Duterte’s bloody drug war.

“We thank the leaders of USPGG, Filipino-American Human Rights Alliance, Samahang Magdalo US, Movement for a Free Philippines, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, religious ecumenical groups, community organizations and our American friends for their successful lobbying efforts in Washington over the past two years,” Rodis said.