Activists hounded former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque in Canada they said is out on a disinformation tour about former president Rodrigo Duterte’s mass-murdering “drug war.”
Members of various Vancouver-based organizations under the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN, New Patriotic Alliance) protested the forum organized by the Canadian chapter of the pro-Duterte Hakbang ng Maisug group last Saturday, July 20.
Roque, a speaker at the forum, is on a North American tour of various Maisug forums.
His Vancouver visit preceded his controversial California stop last Sunday where he posted a video showing President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. allegedly using illegal drugs.
“HUSGAHAN SI VANGAG!” Roque said on X.
In Vancouver, the activists said Roque himself is complicit in Duterte’s crimes by acting not only as Palace spokesperson but as a defender of the “drug war.”
Protestors outside noted that Roque dismissed many extrajudicial killings under Duterte as “coincidental” or “collateral damage.”
The International Criminal Court in The Hague in The Netherlands is set to issue arrest warrants against Duterte and other officials responsible for at least 6,000 deaths from 2016 to 2017.
“Roque justified attacks on and persecution of activists and human rights defenders and other human rights violations,” said Jaela Villegas, vice chair of BAYAN-Canada.
Such attacks include the practice of red-tagging, or labeling legal activists and human rights defenders as communists or terrorists, the group added.
In 2022, Roque claimed that the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP), an alliance predominantly made up of non-Filipino unionists, lawyers, and church people, was a “front” for the Communist Party of the Philippines after ICHRP denounced red-tagging in the Philippines.
At the Renfrew Community Centre on Saturday, Roque reportedly described the protesters as “terrorist CPP-NPA.”
“Red-tagging is a dangerous justification for more human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings of legal dissenters,” Villegas said.
ICHRP-Canada chair Luthfi Mawarid added that Roque “confirmed his hypocrisy as a peace advocate and rights defender by openly red-tagging protesters holding a legal and peaceful protest in the exercise of their basic rights.”
The protesters also supported the findings of the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) held in Brussels earlier this year that found the Duterte, Marcos Jr., and US President Joseph Biden administrations guilty of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law.
The IPT was a quasi-judicial forum convened by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the Friends of the Filipino People in Struggle to investigate and address alleged war crimes committed by the US-supported Marcos and Duterte regimes.
Roque has also been called to the Philippine Senate and House of Representatives to explain his alleged role as the “legal counsel” of illegal operations of a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator hub, which was raided twice for human trafficking, torture, and scams.
In 2021, due to rallies by New York-based activists and a flood of protest statements by Philippine and global rights groups and his own alma mater, Roque lost his ambitious bid for a seat at the International Law Commission.
READ: Roque’s ILC dinner in New York disrupted
Roque then tried his luck for a Senate seat in the 2022 national elections. He lost. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
