Clothing donated for a relief operation was instead used to wipe Emmanuel Asuncion’s blood off the floor of the Worker’s Assistance Center in the Calabarzon region of the Philippines on 7 March. Not too far away in Batangas, the 9-year-old son of Chai Lemita Evangelista and Ariel Evangelista hid under his bed after witnessing the state-sanctioned murder of his parents in their bamboo home.
The United Nations commemorates 75 years of existence in October. Yet there is little to celebrate—the UN has largely failed to deliver collective security and disarmament. It now faces unprecedented challenges from the United States through the Trump administration’s rejection of “globalism”.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s latest outrage is an attempt to shift the blame for rising numbers of COVID-19 cases onto health care workers. Duterte made his extraordinary outburst—accusing them of inciting “revolution”—after reimposing strict quarantine in many of the country’s major cities on 2 August. With more than 150,000 cases, and having overtaken Indonesia’s lead within South-East Asia, the Philippine epidemic is out of control. This is mainly due to Duterte’s flawed policies.
While much of the world remains preoccupied by COVID-19, the Duterte government in the Philippines has launched a raft of authoritarian measures. Draconian anti-terrorism legislation and attacks on media freedom have now emerged, along with continued widespread use of extrajudicial violence.
“Tasks and perspectives” is an interesting term. The plural of the word perspective doesn’t formally exist in the English language. It was the Communist International that introduced the term as a translation of a Russian term.
The federal election results suggests that, while no candidates from the far right were elected to lower house seats, they did influence the result in some areas. It is too early to say what will happen in the Senate.