As people across the country file their annual tax returns, we members of the Hawaii Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (HICHRP) are thinking of the thousands of Filipinos who have been arrested, detained, tortured or murdered without the benefit of trial.

Tax Day is the day when millions remember their financial contributions to the federal government’s duty of protecting life and liberty and ensuring safety and happiness. However, our tax dollars continue to support the Philippine military and police who commit extrajudicial killings and other grave human rights violations against the Filipino people.

The U.S. government’s political and financial support for the Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. regime and its security forces have enabled these crimes against the Filipino people to escalate. Marcos Jr. has kept in place the authoritarian martial law practices of warrantless arrests, trumped-up charges, unjust and indefinite detentions, and the assassinations of rivals practiced by his criminal father Marcos Sr. and by former President Rodrigo Duterte.

To date, none of Hawaii’s congressional representatives have responded affirmatively when we have asked them to condemn these actions and to oppose further funding of these atrocities. Nor did they speak up or take any action to oppose the mistreatment and detention of former Philippine Sen.

Leila de Lima, who was jailed in February 2017 on trumped-up charges. She spent six years in prison, during which she was not allowed to communicate with her family, even while charges against her were ruled unfounded in the courts.

De Lima was finally released on bail late last year but is still not completely free. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the European Parliament have called for her release and cited the deteriorating human rights situation in the Philippines. To their shame, our congressional representatives and state leaders have largely remained silent. They have also failed to join with a growing number of their colleagues in Congress in sponsoring the Philippine Human Rights Act (PHRA), which would suspend U.S. aid to the Philippine military and police until human rights abuses are halted.

Our representatives have also not acted to sanction government officials in the Philippines or Israel for their grave human rights violations. They are allowing our tax dollars to be used to support the bombings and atrocities committed in Gaza under Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government, and repression and killings in the Philippines under the Marcos regime.

In the Philippines, there are more than 800 political prisoners and almost weekly assassinations and arrests of labor leaders, human rights advocates, farmers and fisherfolk leaders. In Gaza, more than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed, including many women and children. We must ask: When is enough, enough? How many more atrocities need to be committed before our government stops using our tax dollars to fund slaughter and repression?

How can our government claim to be for the rule of law and for upholding human rights in our foreign policy as President Joe Biden promised, while turning a blind eye to the ongoing human rights crisis in the Philippines, Gaza and many more places around the world?

It is time for the U.S. to end its military aid and supply of weapons and bombs to the murderous governments of Netanyahu and Marcos Jr.

John Witeck, Seiji Yamada and Richard Rothschiller are members of the Hawaii Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines.