The Executive Board,

Maastricht University,

Minderbroadersberg 4-6

6211 LK Maastricht

The Netherlands

21 August 2018

Dear Sirs/Madam,

Warm Solidarity Greetings!

It has come to our attention that this school year, Ms. Sass Rogando Sasot will be a Docent in the History Department of the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Maastricht University and will be teaching those taking up Bachelors of Arts in European Studies. We would like to appeal to the Executive Board of the university to reconsider their decision to hire Ms. Sasot. The Maastricht University is a university that is known for its internationalism, -- to allow a hard-core propagandist of the fascist Duterte government which has been accused of crimes against humanity would only taint the Maastricht University's name and would only serve to legitimize the tyrannical and brutal regime in the Philippines.

International human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have strongly denounced the mass killings in the Philippines. Amnesty International in its report1 alleges that Philippine police "killed and paid others to kill thousands of alleged drug offenders" in a wave of so-called extrajudicial executions. Human Rights Watch in its World report for 20182 claims that President Rodrigo Duterte has plunged the Philippines into its worst human rights crisis since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s. His “war on drugs,” launched after he took office in June 2016, has now claimed an estimated 27,000 lives of primarily poor urban dwellers, including children.

At last year’s United Nations Human Rights Council, Iceland led a joint statement on behalf of 32 states at the June session and another on behalf of 39 states at the council’s September session, condemning the extrajudicial killings and calling for credible independent investigations into these deaths. Also last year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said, "In the Philippines, I continue to be gravely concerned by the President's open support for a shoot-to-kill policy regarding suspects, as well as by the apparent absence of credible investigations into reports of thousands of extrajudicial killings, and the failure to prosecute any perpetrator. 3

The European Parliament has also called on the Philippine government to stop the spate of extrajudicial killings in the pretext of a "war on drugs" and expressed concern that the police force is "falsifying evidence" to justify them.4

The International Criminal Court has recently opened an official preliminary examination of the Philippine government under President Rodrigo Duterte for crimes against humanity5. An opposition senator in the Philippines said the death toll in the government's war on drugs has now surpassed 20,000 since President Rodrigo Duterte came to office in 2016.6

In the Philippines, members of human rights movement IDEFEND decried the worsening human rights situation and the continuing threats to Philippine democracy. Philippine Democracy is in Danger declared IDEFEND in the wake of more recent events like the deportation of Giacomo Fillbeck, of the Party of European Socialists, the detention of Australian nun Sister Patricia Fox, and the continuing threats to judicial independence. “Verbal assaults of Duterte against international personalities and institutions have now moved to actual reprisals” according to IDEFEND spokesperson Ellecer Carlos. “These latest developments form part of a larger pattern, an apparatus to thwart opposition and silence dissent to his authoritarian rule” asserted Carlos.7

Ms. Sasot’s blog, “For the Motherland”8, has been a propaganda tool to defend the authoritarian regime of Rodrigo Duterte. In one video9, she used foul, vile, and racist language and called Dr. Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings, a son of a whore (putang-ina) and a “white” woman who has no right to intervene in the country. In another video blog10, Ms. Sasot, with disgusting and hateful language, ferociously attacked imprisoned Senator Leila De Lima, the Prize for Freedom 2017 Awardee and Amnesty International’s 2018 “Most Distinguished Human Rights Defender” awardee. Ms. Sasot’s fake news broadcast peddles the line of Duterte that the opposition senator is a “druglord”.

Footnotes:

1. https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/if-you-are-poor-you-are-killed-extrajudicial-executions-in-the-philippines-war-on-drugs/

2. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/philippines

3. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22041

4. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=P8-RC-2018-0198&language=EN

5. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/08/icc-claims-crimes-against-humanity-duterte-philippines

6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/senator-rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-killed-20000-180221134139202.html

7. https://hronlineph.com/2018/04/20/press-release-philippine-democracy-in-danger-idefend/

8. https://www.facebook.com/forthemotherlandph/

9. https://www.clipfail.com/watch/16q5s2u2b3v4c4s5r3o4t2.html

10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzu8q5N_tlY

11. https://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/157166-rodrigo-duterte-fascist-original