As we prepare to file our federal income taxes, traditionally on April 15, it’s also a time to reflect on how our hard-earned tax dollars are spent. Sadly, a portion of our tax dollars fund human rights abuses in the Philippines. Since 2016, when Rodrigo Duterte was elected president, the U.S. has sent $550 million in military aid to the Philippines.

Under Duterte, more than 30,000 Filipinos have been killed by their government. The killings began as a so-called “War on Drugs,” targeting poor drug users and drug dealers. Under the nebulous provisions of the Anti-Terror Law, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippines National Police are now targeting social activists, accusing (red-tagging) them of being Communists and terrorists.

Indigenous people, human rights workers, peasant and labor organizers, environmental activists, journalists, health workers, local elected officials and clergy have been red-tagged, imprisoned and summarily killed, without benefit of a trial. We are concerned that attacks such as those on March 7, now known as “Bloody Sunday” — a day in which Philippine military and police forces killed nine human-rights defenders — will continue.

The Duterte government has used COVID-19 lockdown measures to further militarize the country and repress labor and people’s organizations. His police and military have arrested individuals delivering relief and food to those in need, further increasing the number of political prisoners in the country.

This militarist approach has worsened the Philippine public health situation, while miserably failing to provide a comprehensive health response and adequate economic support to the suffering people amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. With more than 150,000 known active cases, and with numbers and deaths surging upward daily, Filipinos are saying of Duterte, “There is more arresting than testing.”

We call upon the U.S. Congress to introduce and pass the Philippines Human Rights Act (PHRA). The PHRA would halt U.S. government Philippine military funding and assistance (including weapons sales and donations of armaments) to the police until the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. State Department certify a greatly improved human rights record. The government of the Philippines would have to guarantee the human rights of its citizens, establish a judicial system to prosecute members of its military and police responsible for human rights violations, and comply with audits and investigations to ensure that U.S. aid is not used for human rights violations.

Such restrictions are not unprecedented. In 2007, then-U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer held a hearing on the human rights abuses of the Philippine military, leading to a suspension of military funding the following year. A decrease in human rights abuses followed.

Congress has a responsibility to demand accountability and oversight regarding this funding, and whether it is serving the goal of advancing U.S. interests and values. It’s our tax dollars funding these extra-judicial killings and this makes us, to a degree, culpable for these human rights abuses. How much better would it be to help fund COVID relief and recovery efforts, including vaccines?

On this traditional Tax Day, we urge Hawaii’s congressional representatives, especially U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and Congressman Ed Case who serves on the Appropriations Committee, to support the PHRA. President Joe Biden has stated that human rights will be at the center of his foreign policy. Let’s, in fact, honor that.

While in the present moment we are rightfully concerned about Myanmar, the U.S. has little leverage over the Myanmar military — but we have tremendous leverage over the Philippine military. Let’s use this leverage to end this morally untenable situation.

Seiji Yamada, M.D., M.P.H., is a family physician in Hawaii; Arcelita Imasa, M.D., is a family medicine resident physician in Hawaii; Mary Ochs co-chairs the Hawaii Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines.