American human rights activist banned entry into Phl, says rights group Karapatan

BAGUIO CITY(October 10, 2024) -- An American human rights activist was prevented from entering the Philippines on October 5, 2024, human rights group Karapatan claimed.

Copeland Downs, an official observer to Karapatan’s congress was held by the Bureau of Immigration for hours while his luggage was searched and his passport held, Cristina Palabay, Karapatan secretary general said.

Palabay added that Downs was told that the activist cannot enter the Philippines because he is on a blacklist for “attending a rally in 2022” in the Philippines, “a factual error”. 

Copeland, the Chairperson of Portland Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines and an active member of the ICHRP-US faith working group, though safely returned to the United States.

The American human rights activist had visited the Philippines previously to meet with peasant and urban poor communities, according to Palabay.  The American activist was also one of 60 official delegates to the International Observers Mission that investigated the 2022 Philippine national elections. 

Palabay blurted out that “the denial of entry is a violation of Copeland’s rights to freedom of movement and part of the larger pattern of attacks against human rights defenders.”

The Karapatan official cited that documentations in Investigate PH and this year’s International People’s Tribunal, “attacks against human rights organizations have worsened under the US-designed counterinsurgency (COIN) program of the Philippine government.”

Palabay further cited that ‘threats, surveillance, red-tagging, heavy militarization and occupation of communities, alongside repressive “counter-terror” legislation have made the documentation of human rights abuses and war crimes increasingly dangerous’. “Under the COIN program of the Duterte and Marcos regimes, state forces do not distinguish between civilian and so-called “insurgents,” which lead to widespread attacks and violations against individuals, civilian communities and even foreign activists.”

Acccording also to Karapatan, ‘since the Duterte regime, ICHRP has documented 17 incidents of attacks against solidarity activists and members of ICHRP since 2018.’ These include: surveillance of solidarity activists while visiting the Philippines, harassment via placing tarpaulins up in the Philippines calling activists supporters of terrorist groups, red tagging ICHRP members on social media, and tagging state forces in Canada about ICHRP events.

Palabay also reminded that the Philippine government deported Australian activists Sister Patricia Fox and Gill Boehringer under the Duterte regime. 

Karapatan also blamed the 2009 US COIN handbook that “not only calls for a population-centric approach that flattens the distinction between civilian and military targets, but also seeks to win the favor and support from civilian populations in the US and neighboring countries.”  The Philippine government’s COIN, guided by the US, seeks to clean up its human rights image and win support and military aid from abroad. It also attempts to intimidate, harass, and prevent human rights and solidarity activists from exposing the real situation in the Philippines, Palabay denounced.

“The ongoing trend of barring human rights defenders and solidarity activists from entering the Philippines raises the question: what exactly does the Philippine government, and the current Marcos Jr regime, have to hide?” Palabay raised.

She challenged, “if the current regime has nothing to hide, Marcos Jr should immediately lift the ban on all activists who were denied entry into the Philippines.