2017 Karapatan Year-End Report on the Human Rights Situation in the Philippines
“The year 2017 unfolded Duterte’s true nature, a greedy and cruel war-mongering president who uses his power to perpetrate a killing rampage against the people – his war on drugs, his own brand of war-on-terror, and his military’s all-out-war. His imposition and extension of martial law in Mindanao and his continuing implementation of government’s counterinsurgency program, presently Oplan Kapayapaan, have exposed Duterte as a fascist instrument beholden to the whims of his imperialist master, the United States. Duterte has further consolidated his US-loyal security cluster and the neoliberal fanatics in his cabinet, resulting in intensifying attacks against people’s civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. His government has taken the form of a paper tiger – desperately fronting a fierce strongman façade yet ultimately revealing a cowering and subservient running dog to its profit-hungry and fascist masters.”