Write to Your Rep: Reject the Philippine Enhance Resilience Act!

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• U.S. Senator Ben Cardin

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• U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen

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Your Letter

As your constituent, I call on you to reject the Philippine Enhanced Resilience Act of 2024 (PERA), also known as S. 4097. We cannot continue to arm a state known to commit human rights violations en masse. PERA will send an additional 2.5 billion dollars in military aid to the Philippines over the next five years, funding maritime, aerial, and ground weapons, as well as tools of surveillance and cybersecurity.These provisions augment arms and wartime machinery already bankrolled by the US government. In the possession of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), this military aid greenlights the continuation of well-documented human rights violations by the Marcos, Jr. administration. So well-documented, in fact, that U.S. House Rep. Susan Wilde of PA introduced the Philippine Human Rights Act in 2021, calling for a complete halt of American military aid to the Philippines. In light of the indiscriminate bombings and firings on civilians, arbitrary arrests of activists, and numerous reports of extrajudicial killings, I refuse to sit idly by while my tax dollars fund the Marcos, Jr. administration’s deadly counterinsurgency program. Just last month the International People’s Tribunal (IPT) found the Marcos, Jr. administration guilty of these atrocities based on reports, publications, affidavits, written statements, and testimonials from survivors of these grave injustices. “They [AFP] used death threats such as they will put us in one grave. They even said that we should be grateful because they’re not doing those [cutting out our tongue] to us and that they’re not sexually assaulting us” testified Jonila Castro, community organizer with Alliance for Defense of Livelihood, Housing, and Environment in Manila Bay. KARAPATAN, a Philippine Human Rights alliance, reported 13 enforced disappearances, 89 extrajudicial killings, 207 illegal or arbitrary arrests, 22,391 that were bombed, 24,670 individuals forced to evacuate, 39,769 people that face indiscriminate firings, and 1,632,463 who were threatened, harassed, and intimidated by state security forces. These findings should lead to the curtailment of military aid, not an increase. While PERA is promoted as a response to heightened aggression by China in the West Philippine Sea and the Indo-Pacific region, this massive increase of military aid will be used to continue repressing the people of the Philippines. These actions will only serve to displace, maim, and murder the innocent Filipino people, stuck in the middle of a possible war with China they do not agree to. I call on you Senator to STOP the devastating PERA from passing the Senate.