Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Sept. 26 statement from Marco L. Valbuena, Information Officer, Communist Party of the Philippines.

Before the entire world, Duterte revealed himself a remorseless fascist when speaking before the United Nations General Assembly a few days ago, he denounced how human rights have been “weaponized” against his regime. Duterte used the term “weaponize” to denigrate human rights as if it were some malevolent tool used for underhanded aims and to denounce the advocates of human rights as subversives.

In fact, human rights are weapons of the people to defend themselves against state abuses. Only the oppressor and abusers who covet limitless powers would condemn human rights the way Duterte does.

Human rights instruments were forged in response to abuses perpetrated by state powers against the powerless for them to have something to hold the abusers accountable for their actions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in particular, was forged so that the slaughter and torture perpetrated by Hitler under Nazi rule, and the gross abuses of rights during the World War II will never be repeated.

The existence of various human rights instruments, however, have not guaranteed against the emergence of abusers and oppressors. Indeed, state terrorist regimes have emerged in the Philippines and various parts of the world under which human rights have been wantonly violated by ruling class tyrants possessing an insatiable crave for power.

Invariably, human rights have been asserted and promoted to pursue the protection of the people in the face of state terrorism. To be effective, however, human rights and its various instrumentalities must be wielded by the people as weapons as they defend their rights and resist armed suppression by state forces. These must be used as a political, legal and moral instrument to expose and oppose the grave abuses perpetrated by state terrorists, unite the people and embolden them to resist and carry forward their democratic cause.

However, under the Duterte fascist regime, human rights instruments are brazenly being disregarded and unscrupulously thrown aside. Thus, it will take more than the defense and advocacy of human rights to end the grave sufferings under the brutal state terrorist regime.

In their struggle against the Duterte fascist regime, the Filipino people, possess the New People's Army (NPA) as their ultimate weapon to defend their rights against the oppression of the regime's armed instrumentalities. They have the NPA in order to fight back and seek an end to the oppressive and exploitative system on which sprout such outgrowths as Duterte.

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