Terror looms over Pride Protest as gendered forms of violence increase

By Camille Rosas

Rural Women Advocates

 

On June 26, 20 protesters were harassed and illegally arrested during a peaceful Pride protest in Manila. Members of the Philippine National Police confiscated their keys, hijacked their van and brought them to the Manila Police District. Some of the members were manhandled and threatened. While our constitutional right to peaceful assembly has not been suspended, state forces are already terrorizing citizens expressing dissent.

LGBTQ+ group Bahaghari alongside Gabriela Women’s Party, Salinlahi Alliance for Children’s Concerns, Children’s Rehabilitation Center and other progressives orgs demanded free mass testing, socio-economic assistance for workers affected by the lockdown, and rallied against jeepney phase-out and Anti-Terrorism Bill. Police officers violently dispersed the peaceful demonstration that commenced at the Mendiola Peace Arc. Unable to inform the protesters of their supposed violation, the police surrounded the demonstration with their shields and forcefully took over their vehicles.

Not long after the Philippine government announced that enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) would take effect, members of the AFP and PNP were deployed across cities to enforce its strict implementation. Over the months of lockdown, the Filipino public witnessed a disturbing number of reports detailing abuses by law enforcement, such as inhumane punishment of quarantine violators, and the murder of a mentally-ill veteran soldier in broad daylight.

Of these accounts, many were cases of gender-based violence perpetrated by policemen. The harassment of women at checkpoints, the rape of female detainees, and the coerced sexual abuse of prostituted women in exchange for border passes, have made it clearer than ever that Filipino women, those living in poverty in particular, are among the biggest victims of police brutality. According to Salinlahi’s Secretary-General Eule Rico Bonganay, “Under the leadership of President Duterte, members of the LGBTQ+ community have been victims of extra judicial killings like Ryan Hubilla, a human rights worker in Bicol. They have been constantly shamed and discriminated upon. During the community quarantine, LGBTQ+ suffer from brutal and inhumane punishment by the law enforcers – from Barangay officials to the local PNP.”

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a spike in domestic violence worldwide. Women and children who experience physical, psychological, and sexual abuse are isolated and trapped at home with their abusers. The Commission on Human Rights has urged the Philippine government to take protective measures for these victims. However, who can the vulnerable turn to when the authorities have shown that they themselves are guilty of the same brand of macho-feudal abuse?

It is unsurprising as much as it is horrific that the increase in cases of police violence and the increase in cases of gender-based/domestic violence not only coincide, but overlap. What else could be expected of forces weaponized to serve and protect the interests of a fascist, patriarchal state? President Duterte is infamous for violent remarks against women. The same misogyny is reflected in a recent victim-blaming Facebook post by the Lucban Manila Police Station: Kayo naman mga gherlsz, huwag kayo magsusuot ng pagkaikli-ikling damit at pag naman nabastos ay magsumbong din sa amin. Isipin niyo rin!

Looking further, the conceptual origins of militarism and the police are rooted in patriarchal dominance. Legal historians and philosophers as early as Sir William Blackstone and Jeremy Bentham introduced patriarchal notions of police, likening police to the exercise of paternal authority over the family and equating governance with that of feudal households. Their analyses examine historical structures wherein the police act as the arms of punishment and control mobilized by the father (the king or the landlord) in order to subjugate the family (the peasant people).

The dynamics of patriarchy clearly manifest in systems where “superiors” wield dominion over their “subordinates.” The case against Capt. Heherson Zambale, who was charged with the rape and induced abortion of a criminology student, is one of many that paints a picture of its violent consequences. This hierarchy more so exists in a military setting, where ‘breaking the chain of command’ is a grave offense and where masculine-associated values of strength and superiority are given premium. In the words of feminist scholar Cynthia Cockburn, “Capitalism and nationalism cause war, but the patriarchal system of male dominance too gives rise to war-thinking and the war-habit.”

Patriarchy and fascism are both characterized by the consolidation of absolute power and the use of force to suppress opposition. It is no wonder that fascist regimes throughout history are marked by militarization. Filipino women are, again, among the sectors who become collateral for enforcing military power and impunity whenever soldiers get away with their abuses. It happened during World War II, when Japanese soldiers raped Filipino ‘comfort women.’ It happens today, when Filipino soldiers harass, threaten, and rape rural and indigenous women in their own communities.

Demand for the ‘carework’ culturally shouldered by women has risen ever since the outbreak. Hunger, poverty, red-tagging, militarization, and the consequences of neoliberal policies such as the rice ratification law are all conditions that have plagued rural and urban women even before COVID-19 struck the world. The pandemic, coupled with state neglect and oppression, has amplified all of them.

Looming on the horizon, the Anti-Terror Bill, which has been called out by many for being dangerously vague and susceptible to manipulation, makes matters even worse. As Amihan National Chairperson Zenaida Soriano has already pointed out, the bill will only embolden the abuses fostered by the PNP’s anti-women culture. President Duterte has encouraged the military to commit acts of sexual violence, even ordering them to shoot female rebels in the vagina. Under a patriarchal regime, the prospects of justice for women against rapists and murderers from the military and police are terrifyingly bleak.

To ‘gender’ these abuses does not necessarily mean that women are its only victims. To understand that military and police abuses are underlined by patriarchal structures is merely to recognize an inherent power imbalance that urgently needs to be addressed. However, where patriarchy intersects with class intersects with race, it is marginalized women who suffer most.