Joint statement by Migrante Netherlands, Pinay sa Holland-GABRIELA, and Balik/Bayan
When justice has been so long denied, where will you stand?
February 22nd marks the beginning of Bantay Katarungan week, where justice-seeking Filipino organizations across the Netherlands and Europe will converge on the International Criminal Court for a series of mobilizations and activities around former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s trial. We welcome all patriotic and peace-loving Filipinos and allies to join us to demand justice for the victims of Duterte’s crimes. At the same time, we know that for everyday people in the Philippines, life after Duterte hasn’t really changed – the drug war continues, poverty intensifies, and repression worsens by the day. The culture of impunity that enabled Duterte’s crimes against humanity continues under Marcos, Jr.’s corrupt government.
The problems in the Philippines go beyond the actions of any one person. No matter the President, the conditions for the Filipino people never improve. This is why in the spirit of justice and accountability, we must set our sights on the system that enables these problems to persist. We must arouse, organize, and mobilize against the rotten system in place that feeds the unending cycle of corruption and culture of impunity that ultimately oppresses the Filipino people. The system that allows politicians to line their pockets with wealth while the Filipino people starve and are constantly left at the mercy of the rich. The system of governance where bureaucrat capitalism prevails.
What is bureaucrat capitalism and why is it “business as usual” in the Philippine government?
Bureaucrat capitalism is when politicians and officials use their positions in government to accumulate wealth and power, instead of using these resources to serve the people. Bureaucrat capitalists use the government as a machinery for business interests for the ruling elite and for foreign influence.
The Filipino people are no strangers to the crimes of bureaucrat capitalists. Most Filipinos will answer the same when you ask what the biggest problem in government is: “corruption”. And bureaucrat capitalism breeds corruption. Even just in the last year, we’ve seen numerous cases that have brought the issue of corruption to the forefront, and while the contexts are different, the patterns are the same.
In recent years, billions of pesos have been funneled into so-called “flood control projects” under the administration of Marcos Jr. These projects were supposed to protect communities from worsening typhoons and climate disasters, but floods continue to devastate urban poor communities, raising the question as to where these funds actually went. Reports of overpriced contracts and over 400 “ghost projects” reveals public money of up to PHP 197B (€650 million) have revealed that public money supposedly allocated for social welfare and disaster mitigation were pocketed by officials instead of protecting the people it was meant to serve.
More recent developments have exposed Marcos Jr. using lower-ranking government officials as scapegoats to rid himself of responsibility and portray corruption as the fault of isolated individuals rather than the outcome of a broken system that was designed to operate in precisely this way. Further evidence has also surfaced revealing Marcos Jr.’s direct links to infrastructure project kickbacks. When billions of pesos disappear into politicians’ pockets while communities become flooded, schools and evacuation centers remain underfunded, and there is no aid from the government to those affected, it exposes the true face of how bureaucrat capitalism operates. And the Filipino people have had enough.
The recent bombings of Mindoro and the illegal detention of youth activist and researcher Chantal Anicoche also highlights how deep bureaucrat capitalism runs in the Philippines and how it colludes with imperialism to exacerbate the land problem in the country. Foreign corporations, working in tandem with corrupt Philippine politicians as well as the fascist Armed Forces of the Philippines, are responsible for the displacement and landlessness of peasant communities, the environmental destruction of Indigenous lands and the fascist repression of activists and community members who rise up in their defense. Militarization and so-called “development projects” owned by both foreign multinationals and big bureaucrat capitalists are responsible for the deaths of three Iraya-Mangyan children and two youth researchers in Abra de Ilog. Mindoro is rich in natural resources which is why it is a target for state-backed extraction projects.
In Dupax del Norte, Nueva Vizcaya, Indigenous and peasant farming communities have long resisted large-scale mining operations backed by foreign corporations, including UK-based Woggle mining enterprise that was granted state approval to operate on ancestral lands in August 2025. These projects threaten to displace entire communities, destroy livelihoods and cause widespread environmental destruction.The government has repeatedly sided with foreign corporate interests over the people and handed land over to foreign capital in the name of so-called “development”. When residents formed human barricades to defend their land, state security forces were deployed to violently dismantle and disperse community members who were only asserting their rightful claims to the land. Again, the state revealed whose interests it truly serves. It is not the people but rather corporate and foreign business interests.
Rise up against repression, fight back against fascism
Throughout each of these cases where bureaucrat capitalistism was operating at large, the Filipino people have always resisted. In response to the anomalous flood control projects, thousands of Filipinos flooded the streets of Mendiola on September 21 demanding accountability for the rampant exploitation, only to be faced with brutal state repression at the hands of the Philippine National Police, who arrested over 200 people. In the bombings of Mindoro, progressive organizations around the world pushed for public pressure demanding the release of Chantal, and demanding justice for the lives lost during the bombings. It was the people once again in Dupax del Norte who made a human barricade forcing the foreign mining company to halt their operations while garnering worldwide support from solidarity organizations.
Time and again, it is the people who tirelessly resist and fight back against corruption. And what does the government do in response? It uses fascist violence and deception to repress and demoralize the spirit of the people. We can see this in the numerous arrests, the countless trumped-up charges, and the state propaganda machine that is heading into overdrive. We see this in the attempts by the state to shift the narrative away from the bombings and illegal capture and detention of Chantal by the military and instead take away her agency by claiming she is brainwashed and “terror groomed”. This culture of impunity criminalizes activism and distracts from the real issue: that the government is bombing and killing its own people to secure land and resources for profit-driven projects. This shows that bureaucrat capitalism is enforced not only through corruption but also through violence and militarization.
If we are to truly stop these cycles of corruption and impunity we must root it out at its very core. Justice doesn’t stop at the ICC. It cannot stop at Duterte. It cannot stop at Marcos Jr. Justice demands that we dismantle the very system that produces these very tyrants. We must strike at bureaucrat capitalism, the imperialist interests that fund and direct it, and the feudal system of exploitation that provides its basis. Because while these problems persist, no matter who is in power, the Filipino people and their lands will suffer the same fate.
The Filipino people are not powerless victims. We must take heed of our history – of the heroic Katipunan revolution against the Spanish colonizers, the First Quarter Storm which revitalized the revolutionary movement in the Philippines, and the EDSA uprisings which toppled the previous Marcos presidency. We are the makers of history. We did it before and we can do it again. Only through collective action have positive changes been brought about for the Filipino people. We cannot trust that change will come through the current corrupt system, we must change it ourselves.
We refuse to accept a Philippines that is for sale to the highest bidder. We refuse to accept a government that bombs its own people and accepts corruption as normal. We refuse to stand idly by as our people are brutalized by poverty while the ruling class gets richer. The time to act is now. Join our upcoming actions. Organise in your communities. Join our mass organisations. Be part of the movement for genuine justice, democracy, true liberation, and long-lasting peace in the Philippines. We are stronger together when we are united for change. Sulong, mga kababayan at mga kaibigan! Makibaka, huwag matakot!
*** To learn more about the upcoming activities, the Duterte Panagutin network, and about the participating organizations, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us! Let’s work together to push for truth, justice, and accountability! ***
