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MANILA, Philippines – One of the country’s largest labor federations warned the government on Saturday that as many as 200,000 Filipinos could lose their jobs if the European Union withdrew the trade privileges it had granted the country due to allegations of human rights violations by part of Duterte. administration.
European parliamentarians voted on Thursday by an overwhelming majority of 626 to seven, with 52 abstentions, to adopt a resolution to withdraw commercial benefits from the Philippines under the Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (SPG +) if the government did not comply with international conventions on human rights.
It was the third time since 2016 that the European Parliament has made the threat in the wake of extrajudicial executions linked to President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, in addition to deadly attacks on social activists, ongoing corruption and threats against press freedom.
“We urge the government to take appropriate action and take further action to address the issues raised by the resolution,” said Gerard Seno, national executive vice president of Associated Labor Unions (ALU), a 66-year-old labor federation that counts in its ranks there. more than 200,000 unionized workers in the manufacturing, services and agriculture and Philippine sea-based sectors.
“[I]If the Philippine government does not give the correct answer to the resolution, we will lose the [European] market, what [will] Outcome [in] more unemployment and loss of business opportunities, ”said Seno.
Citing figures from the Department of Commerce and Industry, Seno said that since the GSP + privilege was granted in 2014, Philippine exports to the 27 countries of the European Union have increased by 35 percent and created 200,000 more jobs.
“If the revocation of the GSP + privilege is completed, we will lose these jobs,” he said.
6,200 ‘duty free’ products
No duty is imposed on the more than 6,000 products exported to the European Union from the Philippines under the GSP + trade privilege. Among these products are pineapples, mangoes, tuna, footwear and coffee.
Acting Secretary for Socio-Economic Planning Karl Kendrick Chua said last week that 8.8 million jobs were lost between January and April due to the “very strict quarantine” imposed to control the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chua said that the unemployment rate next year could range between 6 and 8 percent. The latest unemployment rate in July “improved” to 10 percent from 17.7 percent in April, he said.
Aside from trade sanctions, the European Parliament resolution also asked EU members to support a proposal to establish an “independent international investigation” of human rights violations in the Philippines.
He said that there were also threats, harassment, intimidation, rape and violence against those who denounced extrajudicial executions; murders of human rights workers; and the “deterioration” of press freedom in the country, citing the case of Rappler’s executive director, Maria Ressa, who was convicted of cyberlibel, and the shutdown of broadcast giant ABS-CBN.
The resolution also called for the immediate release of the detained senator Leila de Lima, saying she was being held on “politically motivated charges.”
The vote of the European parliamentarian provoked an angry reaction from presidential spokesman Harry Roque, who challenged them to “go ahead” and impose the sanction.
Alan criticizes ‘interference’
In a Facebook post on Saturday, President Alan Peter Cayetano also took offense at the resolution, calling it “total interference … in the purely domestic affairs of the Philippines.”
“For our friends in the European Parliament, we have a saying here in the Philippines that the world is round,” he said in Filipino. “The day will come, and set this in stone, when the Philippines will be in a position to impose economic sanctions on its countries.”
Albay opposition representative Edcel Lagman said Roque’s reaction was “pure bravado.”
Roque’s claim that “national institutions” such as the courts, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Human Rights Commission (CHR) exist to “promote accountability” in cases of rights violations is “a blatant evasion from an independent international investigation, ”Lagman said.
“The HRC has no prosecutorial powers, while the Justice Department is a virtual deputy to the presidency even when the courts have failed to resolve pending human rights cases, except in very few,” he said.
Lagman said it was “selfish” for the administration to prohibit an independent United Nations investigation, through the UN Human Rights Council, into the worsening human rights status in the country under the pretext of sovereign immunity.
De Lima said on Saturday that due to his administration’s reaction to the European Parliament resolution, Duterte “would rather continue killing Filipinos than keep the commercial benefits” of the European Union.
“Duterte calls it defending the independence and sovereignty of the Philippines,” he said in a statement. “What it is not saying is that no government in the modern world can still claim to have the independence and sovereignty to summarily execute its own citizens.”
He also said that Roque was selling a lie when he blamed José María Sison for the decision of the European parliamentarians without presenting evidence.
Sison, founding president of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), lives in exile in the Netherlands.
“Duterte’s problem is not that Joma Sison has won the EU. Duterte’s problem is that Hitler did not win the war in Europe, ”De Lima said.
Duterte has become an “international pariah” who is isolated not only from his own people but also from the rest of the world, according to the CPP.
“He is now among the ranks of Hitler, Mussolini, Marcos, Suharto, Idi Amin, Lukashenko, Park Chung Hee and other detested dictators who murdered his people and plundered his nation,” said CPP information director Marco Valbuena in a statement.
He said that Roque’s claim that the CPP influenced more than 600 European parliamentarians to vote in favor of the resolution was “the height of the paranoia of this regime.”
“It may be false, but thanks for the unintentional compliment,” Valbuena said.
—With reports from Leila B. Salaverria, Melvin Gascon, and Delfin T. Mallari Jr.
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