Sining Lila, a cultural mass organization of women and LGBTQ+ individuals, strongly condemned the continued persecution of the youth and the parents of those arbitrarily arrested by police on September 21 during a protest against corruption.
“The forced separation from their families, the inhumane length of their detention, and the neglect of their physical and mental well-being are clear violations of human rights. With each day they remain in detention, their future is slowly being stolen,” the organiations stressed in a press statement.
Sining Lila asserted that “the youth are not criminals.” Instead, “they are victims of a decaying system—a culture perpetuated by a government that chooses to imprison and punish the defenseless and the poor, rather than hold to account the bureaucrat-capitalists in power who enrich themselves and rob the nation’s future.”
For Sining Lila, the actions of the police and other authorities prove that their loyalty does not lie with the people, but with Marcos, Duterte, and the rotting system of governance in the Philippines.
“Instead of robbing them of their freedom, the state should be responding to the cries of the marginalized. Instead of prisons, there should be schools. But in this time, it is the youth—especially those from impoverished families and out-of-school communities—who are most deprived of a dignified life. Their experience is proof of the worsening police brutality and systematic violence that the state now enforces with seeming legitimacy.”
Sining Lila called for the immediate release of the youth who have been unjustly imprisoned, even as it also demanded justice “not only for the incarcerated youth, but for all young people whose futures have been denied due to state violence.”
“Sining Lila insists: “It is not the youth who must be held accountable. Those who must be held accountable are the corrupt in government—in the Senate, in Congress, and the very Marcos-Duterte regime. It is time to end the bureaucrat-capitalist system that continues to steal the future of the youth.”
In the end, Sining Lila called on “all people to unite and intensify the demand for the immediate release of the Mendiola 216, and to join the people’s movement to end this decaying, corrupt, fascist, and oppressive system.”
