Wazzup Pilipinas!
More than 100 youth groups from around the globe condemned Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and other authoritarian leaders and political parties during the world congress of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) on February 15-18, 2018.
This comes amidst the barrage of criticisms the Duterte administration received over his strongman policies with the Amnesty International Report released on February 22 which stressed the spate of "lawlessness and violence" in the Philippines.
The US intelligence community also tagged the Duterte administration as a ‘threat to democracy’ on the World Threat Assessment Report released on February 21.
In a manifesto presented during the congress in Montenegro, the youth groups slammed the global rise of populism, fundamentalism, fascism, and the far right. The youth groups called for an international campaign to resist the “politics of hate, violence, disempowerment, and intolerance.”
Akbayan Youth, a democratic socialist youth organization from the Philippines, led the passage of the manifesto during the gathering of international youth activists. In his presentation speech for the manifesto, Akbayan Youth Chair JC Tejano condemned President Duterte’s war on drugs which has killed more than 20,000 Filipinos.
“Today, [Rodrigo Duterte] is set to transform our government into a dictatorship with martial law, suppression of dissent, and constitutional change. We now know that the Philippines is not an isolated case. Mr. Duterte’s rise to power was only a part of a global tide – a global siege of populism, fundamentalism, fascism, and the far right in Asia, America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa,” Tejano said.
The manifesto condemned President Trump for his policies against migrant workers and sexist remarks. It also slammed President Xi for the building of Chinese military bases in the West Philippine Sea and the arrest of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.
The manifesto likewise lamented the rise of far-right movements in European Union member states, such as the National Front in France, the Alternative for Deutschland in Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria, and the CasaPound and Brothers in Italy.
Other heads of state like State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and President Vladimir Putin of Russiawere also cited in the manifesto for their controversial human rights records.
Meanwhile, the youth groups slammed the rise of ISIS fundamentalism that has spurred religious violence in Africa and the Middle East.
IUSY is the largest political youth organization in the world, with member organizations from over 100 countries. IUSY was founded in 1907.
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