Rights group Karapatan expect ‘warmongering in Asia, threats vs Filipinos’ to shoot up with Trump

BAGUIO CITY (January 20, 2025) -- Philippine human rights group Karapatan is anticipating warmongering in Asia, threats vs Filipinos to shoot up with Donald Trump’s returning back to power for the second time as President of the United States.

“While returning US president Donald Trump took pains to distance himself from his predecessor Joe Biden during the electoral campaign, there is one striking issue where the two of them agree on: intensifying efforts to drag the Philippines into US warmongering schemes in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly against China and North Korea. Trump’s hostility towards China certainly matches, if not surpasses, that of Biden,” Cristina Palabay, chairperson of Karapatan said.

Palabay insisted that the recent creation of the Philippines-Security Sector Assistance Roadmap (P-SSAR) “seeks to ensure the provision of continuing US military assistance to puppet regimes in the Philippines, starting with the Marcos Jr. government.” 

She expects (Pres.) Trump “to affirm and pursue the P-SSAR, which will ostensibly facilitate the country’s transition from internal security operations to a “robust territorial defense posture”--a roundabout way of saying that it is aimed at enhancing the Philippine military’s capability to pander to the US’ bellicose designs in the Asia-Pacific.”

According to Karapatan, the P-SSAR jumpstarted with the signing of the General Military Information Agreement and the publicized combined coordination center of the US and Philippine armed forces during the last quarter of 2024.

Palabay also expected Trump to uphold Biden’s commitment of $500 military aid to the Philippine government to implement the P-SSAR, while (Pres.) Marcos Jr. pursues his National Security Policy that mimics US counter-insurgency blueprint.  “Aside from US military aid’s fueling of military operations undertaken by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the US bares its advisory role in implementing domestic terror laws that undermine rights and freedoms and target political dissenters,” she added.

Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of US, Karapatan also expects, “(to) usher in a flurry of laws and orders that will be detrimental to migrants,” citing Trump’s pledged to deport a record number of undocumented immigrants, including those who have been working and living in the US for decades and have not committed crimes.

Karapatan also cited Trump plans “to heavily militarize the US border with Mexico and start construction of the border wall he has long been obsessed with, akin to the heavily fortified walls that Israel has built along its border with Palestine.”

According to Karapatan, migrant labor was chosen (by Trump) “as his scapegoat to divert the US public’s attention from the deeper roots of the economic crisis buffeting the American people,” further believing that “(his) tack is not much different from that of Adolf Hitler, who fomented rabid anti-Semitism and exterminated millions of Jews as a way of refocusing the German public’s attention from their economic travails amid the Great Depression.”

According also to Karapatan, ‘among those to be affected by Trump’s impending massive crackdown on migrants are some 300,000 undocumented Filipino workers or about a fourth of Filipino-Americans, many of whom are long-time residents of the US’.