In a timely fashion, recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey results show that majority of Filipinos affirm that they exercise “very strong” freedom of speech. At least 59 percent of Filipinos say they can “openly and without fear” criticize the Duterte administration.
Such indication starkly contradicts the imputations of a New York Times editorial citing the study of some non-governmental organization ranking the Philippines as “the most dangerous place for land and environmental defenders.”
NGO Global Witness cited the cases of activist-lawyer Ben Ramos, who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen, and a United Nations special rapporteur for indigenous peoples Vicky Corpuz, who received death threats “for criticizing the administration’s human rights violations.”
I would have concurred with the NY Times and Global Witness if they had declared this country as the most dangerous place for illegal drug traffickers and drug dealers. But for government critics, I don’t think so.
In fact, we have so much freedom of speech that some of us tend to exercise excessively. Take it from a graduate of the School Of Hard Knocks.
President Duterte has professed freedom of speech too strongly for everyone to enjoy that his own critics have used it against him, his family and his Cabinet in their ill-designs to spawn destabilization and discredit and oust the administration.
The culprits, including Yellow journalists, denied the “Matrix” when it was exposed following Bikoy’s grossly defamatory and seditious “Ang Totoong Narcolist” viral video.
Exercising freedom of speech, ex-five star hotel mutineer and ex-senator Antonio Trillanes and his supporting cast stood by Bikoy, who eventually called a media conference at the Integrated Bar of the Philippines offices to exercise his freedom of speech in the flesh.
So, what is the NY Times harping on when freedom of speech or freedom of expression, as well as freedom of the press, are so strongly alive and well in this country under this administration?
I would have also agreed with NY Times if they said the Philippines has been the most dangerous place for journalists in the past decades. Remember the Maguindanao Massacre on Nov. 23, 2009?
We all would agree if NY Times had said the country was the most dangerous place for farmers after at least 13 peasants were gunned down and scores wounded at the Mendiola Bridge by policemen as asked by the late President Cory Aquino for the implementation of the agrarian reform.
Again, we all would have agreed if NY Times and Global Witness ranked the country the most dangerous place for farmers after at least 13 were supposedly massacred by the private army of Cojuangco family at the Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac on Nov. 16, 2004.
On April 1st before the 2016 elections, at least three farmers were shot and killed during the dispersal of 6,000 farmers who were demonstrating their protest for lack of food assistance from the Noynoy Aquino government during the El Niño drought. That should have made the country the most dangerous place for hungry farmers in 2016.
Meanwhile, Manong Digong has been busy in the past three years distributing land titles to farmers under the agrarian reform.
So is the Philippines a dangerous place to live? Well, only for drug lords, rapists, and murderers.
