Attached is a primer on the HSA from the Alternative Law Groups for those interested to know.
We celebrate today the 35th year anniversary of the Declaration of Martial Law.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
ALG Press Statement on the HSA
Press release
21 September 2007
Worse than Martial Law:
With HSA, poor communities are most vulnerable to repression of human rights
Citing an incident in Sumilao, Bukidnon, eighteen lawyers’ organizations under the coalition Alternative Law Groups, Inc. (ALG), slammed the Human Security Act of 2007 (R.A. 9372) for further threatening the already vulnerable poor communities nationwide.
On Sunday, 16 September 2007, seven armed men in full battle gear and carrying high-powered guns went to the Mapalad Freedom Hall of the Sumilao farmers in Bukidnon. They searched the documents inside the hall without a search warrant and seized the papers of lawyer Arlene Bag-ao of BALAOD Mindanaw, an ALG member organization and counsel of the Sumilao farmers. The team of armed men, headed by SPO2 Avelino Chia and composed of two policemen and 5 members of the Philippine Army, took legal and campaign documents belonging to the Sumilao farmers. The armed personnel, when asked by a Sumilao leader to sign their logbook, made a note in Bag-ao’s notebook saying that they were just conducting “police visibility patrol” and that they helped themselves to the food in the Mapalad Freedom Hall. SPO2 Chia even signed his name in the notebook.
“This is clearly a violation of people’s rights considering that the combined police and army team entered a private property of the farmers, illegally searched the area, and seized without proper papers our documents. SPO2 Chia and his team did that because they know that in this country nowadays violations against peoples’ rights to life, liberty, property, and due process go unpunished by the government. The extra-judicial killings are not resolved and are in fact tolerated, what can a community of landless farmers’ possibly do against an illegal search and seizure?” asked Bag-ao.
In another incident, a complaint against two officers and one member of Yellow Bus Lines Employees’ Union (YBLEU) has been filed with the City Prosecutors’ Office of Koronadal, connecting them to the 3 August 2007 bombing in the bus lines’ Koronadal terminal. They were charged of Murder with Multiple Frustrated Murder and Destructive Arson in Relation to RA 9372. Earlier, in June 2007, YBLEU filed a Notice of Strike (NOS) with the National Conciliation and Mediation Board (NCMB) to protest the unfair labor practice (ULP) by management. The union got the necessary strike votes, and was already preparing for the possible eventuality of launching the strike, but had to drop the plan when the Secretary of Labor assumed jurisdiction over the issue.
After the bombing on 3 August, the management announced that it was suspending operations. On 11 August, workers happily returned to work upon orders of the management. But on the same day, at about 6 pm, Jaime “Jimmy” Rosios, who was on his way home, was taken at gun point by armed men and forced into a waiting vehicle along the highway. To this date, Jimmy has not surfaced.
Union members have sought the help of law enforcement agencies and human rights groups, to no avail. They later learned that Jimmy has been charged under the Human Security Act, together with Jessie Rivas, another active and outspoken union officer, and Ibrahim Bacal, a union member who has a pending case against Yellow Bus for retirement benefits.
ALG spokesperson Marlon Manuel noted that these violations were already experienced - even without the Human Security Act (HSA) - by marginalized communities of farmers, laborers, Moros, and indigenous peoples but with the passage of the HSA, this trampling of rights worsened. “The Human Security Act’s definition of ‘terrorism’ is overly broad that it can encompass legitimate and non-terrorist activities, resulting in a chilling effect for those who are lawfully exercising their civil and political rights. The provisions on surveillance, interception and recording of private communications, prolonged and unlimited period of detention without warrant, and proscription of terrorist organizations, associations, or groups of persons, effectively infringe constitutionally guaranteed rights. Under these circumstances, the poor and marginalized sectors are the most vulnerable to abuses in the implementation of the HSA because they lack the resources to ensure that their rights are respected and protected,” said Manuel.
He added, “Our situation these days is worse than martial law in the 1970s. At least then, Marcos categorically declared Martial Law in September 21, 1972. This Anti-Terror Law, sugarcoated as the Human Security Act, legitimizes the government’s repression of rights while it is claiming that we are still in a fully-functioning democracy and that the law only serves to protect the state and the people from terror attacks. The HSA is not good in apprehending who it should go after but it is excellent in terrorizing local communities that peacefully claim their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.”
The ALG urged the communities to be vigilant. The ALG launched a nationwide monitoring network to guard against human rights abuses that may be perpetrated in the implementation of the HSA. It gave hotline numbers of the ALGs nationwide that people could contact whenever there are abuses being perpetrated for which legal assistance may be needed. “We cannot allow laws such as the HSA to take away from us our rights that we fought for just as we certainly cannot allow armed men to just search and seize communities’ documents,” concluded Manuel. -30-
Contact:
Marlon Manuel: 0917-532-6446, 02-426-8569
Jane Capacio: 0917-546-0123, 02-433-0760
Arlene Bag-ao: 0920-9098560, 08822-738-402 (for queries on the Mapalad incident)
Raissa Jajurie: 0919-743-0503, 082-298-4161 (for queries on the YBLEU incident)
HSA Press Statement
For Immediate Release
July 17, 2007
LRC-KSK Statement on the Human Security Act of 2007 or Republic Act (RA) 9372
Human Security Act of 2007: A Draconian Measure
of Insecurity and Terror
It is the height of irony and insult to the Filipino people that a recently passed and newly implemented law–is named the Human Security Act (HSA) of 2007 or Republic Act (RA) 9372. The HSA, which took effect on July 15, 2007--stands accused of promoting insecurity and fear.
Flawed to its core and hated like the regime that produced it, the HSA is the Arroyo government’s belligerent response to the growing popular resistance to its misrule. Also known as the (anti) terrorism law, the HSA is being deplored as the regime’s latest and most comprehensive legal measure of repression and curtailment of our fundamental rights and basic freedoms.
The Human Security Act of 2007 is riddled with grave infirmities and loopholes and breaches the Constitution, the international human rights as well as international humanitarian laws and principles. Its growing number of critics are calling for its outright repeal.
A key issue against this law is the dangerously vague, encompassing and overarching notion of “terrorism” that draws no distinction between “acts of terror” and legitimate exercise of dissent and social protest. The fundamental principle of due process is seriously violated in this regard. Anyone can be accused of the crime of “terrorism” that is not precisely and legally defined. By criminalizing dissent and by drawing no distinction between legitimate acts of protests and political actions versus common crimes---the HSA is a draconian measure of insecurity and terror.
The HSA comes at a time, when the legitimacy of the Arroyo government is seriously being challenged and a prevailing climate of impunity has come to characterize the regime’s brazen disregard for human rights and its gruesome record of atrocities committed against its staunchest critics—the social activists, human rights defenders and the left movement. We have witnessed for instance, how the likes of Jonas Burgos, son of a press freedom and anti-Martial Law icon could be abducted in broad daylight by suspected agents of the state and be made to disappear until today. We have known that tens to hundreds of suspected leftist activists were shot dead by hooded assailants astride their motorcycles.
Against this national backdrop of lawlessness and a climate of fear and terror, the Human Security Act of 2007 or RA 9372 will open the floodgates for the wholesale violations of human rights and civil liberties.
The Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan/Friends of the Earth-Philippines (LRC-KsK/FOE-Phils.) joins the growing voices of indignation against the HSA and the louder clamor for its repeal. Such highly infirm law has no place in a supposedly democratic society and political system supposedly governed by the rule of law.
Given the regime’s track record of mounting atrocities and human rights abuse, the unreformed military and the police forces, the national security-mindset of the HSA’s architects and implementors and the red-baiting and labeling of groups , organizations and individuals critical of the government’s policies and actions---we have all the reasons to doubt the so-called safeguards that the HSA contain against arbitrary acts and abuse.
Under the HSA, “terrorist acts” include political offenses and actions such as rebellion and insurrection, thus criminalizing political dissent and actions. Suspected offenders under the law are subject to surveillance and wiretapping, and their assets frozen. Organizations, particularly those critical of the regime, can easily be proscribed as “terrorists” and their members prosecuted. Thus, the new law provides for the legal justification for state and security forces to go after the “enemies of the state” it will now call “terrorists”, and this time, replete with legal guarantees and all-out impunity.
This early, the law’s architects and implementors are itching to wield the full force of RA 9372 to weigh down anyone it will conveniently call “communists” and “terrorists”. This includes even legal organizations and elected public officials that are among the most strident critics of the regime and its harmful policies and actions.
Assault against the legitimate right to self-determination
The LRC-KsK expresses particular concern about the RA 9372’s impact on the Indigenous peoples and other vulnerable sectors whose sources of subsistence and even their whole way of life—stand seriously threatened by the adverse impact of the GMA government’s frenzied drive to attract large-scale investors into the extractive industries such as mining, logging and plantations.
For instance, given the regime’s policy of attracting huge mining investments in resource-rich areas all over the country , where many indigenous peoples and rural producers reside—and given the deeply flawed legal and justice system that has largely failed to give redress to the aggrieved poor—it is not hard to believe that the full weight of the law may well be used --in the guise of targeting “terrorists” and “threats to national security”---in order to pacify and silence affected communities and indigenous peoples resisting incursion of large-scale mining into their ancestral domains.
The enforcement of the HSA runs ominously parallel with the government’s announcement to develop 23 priority mining investments areas all over the
Who can stop the regime’s minions and their allies in the mining industry from subjecting anti-mining protesters, non-government organizations and church organizations to surveillance, witch hunt, harassment—and when all else fail, proscribing them as “terrorist” organizations or “communist fronts”?
When indigenous peoples will put up barricades to stop huge mining equipment from bulldozing their way into the their sacred lands and ancestral domains—what will stop the regime’s local minions, in complicity with mining companies—to label these acts of protests as “economic sabotage” and “terrorist acts”?
The HSA 2007 can thus, be used against the indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and just struggles of local communities to assert their right, and to defend the country’s national patrimony.
May we then ask: who is terrorizing whom? Who is responsible for and promoting the insecurity of our people? It is the height of absurdity that the very regime that has caused the people’s continued misery and sufferings, and has thus continued to fan the flames of discontent, has now proclaimed to save the people from threats of “terrorism” and threats to their security.
The Arroyo government is afraid of its own shadows and has no one to blame but itself for the increasing national restiveness against its governance. It has allowed its own security and survival to take precedence over the people’s security and well-being, basic rights and fundamental freedoms.
We say no to the Arroyo government’s HSA that is passed in our name. We refuse to accept that the Arroyo regime’s need for security and survival is also our own. Instead, we call for the repeal of the HSA and for the reversal of anti-people policies and programs that are at the roots of armed conflicts, terrorist threats and national unrest that continue to besiege our country and society.
It is increasingly clear to more and more people that the Human Security Act of 2007—far from providing the Filipino people the security from fear and want---is an illegal, unjust and anti-people legislation aimed at instilling fear and paralyzing people into inaction.
The Arroyo regime should remember too well the lessons from its predecessors and from their ill-fated policies and actions: injustice and repression begets resistance. And, nothing can subdue the power of a united and determined people struggling for justice and defending their rights and hard-won freedoms.
From the women and men of
The Legal Rights and
Kasama sa Kalikasan/Friends of the Earth-Philippines
(LRC-KSK/FOE-Phils.)
For questions and additional information, please contact Sammy Gamboa at sammybkk05@gmail.com.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Backpacking in Mindanao
Ever seen a chicken standing and walking up straight? Well, I have. I was so awed and amazed, i just had to take a picture of it (with permission of course from the owner).It's been some time since i last posted anything here and the reason is simple: i was just too busy for anything else than work.
I just got back from a three-week backpacking adventure in Mindanao. It was both for pleasure and work.
I start off my adventure when i found out that i had to take back my leave that i have applied for since last May to attend the Kadayawan festival in Davao to attend a forum of sorts in Cagayan de Oro City. I had to spend two hours in line in the Cebu Pacific ticketing office in Galleria to rebook my return flight only to find out the next day that i had to rebook it again.
Anyway, I arrived in Davao on a Saturday which my friends and i already marked off for a surprise despedida for a friend who is, as i write this, in class in Trente (inggit). The party was a blast, and we ended up driving about two hours around the city looking for a Videoke bar that wasn't brimming with customers. We then set out for a tree-planting expedition in Arakan (still part of the despedida thing sponsored this time by my friend), South Cotabato. View was exquisite (don't have pictures of those yet), it would remind you of the Shire, and the falls was fabulous. The trek was kinda horrific for my busted knees but fun nevertheless (with my trusty knee brace and Hot Leg dancer Jan). Imagine sliding down on cogon grass to end up in a falls overlooking the whole valley. (A friend of mine, before he jumped from the falls, said he wouldn't mind dying as long as his last image of earth was the one before him)
With that adventure over, and with my aching bones, I then proceeded to CDO after a great seafood dinner. CDO was pretty much all work. After spending the week there, i went back to Davao and then trooped to Samal Island.
Come Monday, I then went to Kidapawan to visit a very dear friend, a 69 year old Italian missioner who gave me his published diary, with matching dedication and all. I was too spend a couple of nights on the field after passing through Kidapawan. Fortunately, during the Red Moon, when the shadow of the earth fell upon the moon, i was at a place where the stars were so clear and so bright, like nothing you've ever seen anywhere near the metro.
It was the next day when i saw the standing chicken. And i was enthralled. I guess it was a good ten minutes that i just watched it walk, pecking around for food.
After another night staying at a friend's place, i went back to Kidapawan, but passing through Sultan Kudarat first to drop in at a government office there (and what a small world, the official there is the father of a schoolmate), and spent another couple of nights there to finish my business.
I went straight to Marbel (Koronadal), riding in a van that just had to cram all breathable space with people and stopping at every possible stop, to meet up with an officemate for another field visit. We were to ride the habal-habal for about 2 hours up the mountains (where it's freaking cold), and chat with the indigenous communities, explaining to them their rights to land and to life. By this time, i have already gotten sick thrice during the trip and i've been sleeping pretty early to catch up with all the traveling i've done.
Of course i had to plan when and where i would be having my clothes laundered in between trips. I also had to schedule my bathroom time.
Finally, after two nights spent on field, I traveled back to Davao, bought dinner from McDo, took a bath and just sunk in bed...of course i just had to get sick anymore because of the damn aircon.
Exactly on the 21st day of my trip, i finally flew back to Manila with 23 kilos of fruit, but spending only 400 for all of it. I love fruit season.
Anyway, in a nutshell, I have been to six cities, passed through ARMM, gone to three provinces and i lost count with the barangays, and only spending not more than two nights in any one given place. whew.
But what can i say, the view is spectacular, the people are lovely, and the food is great!
Though i wouldn't want to repeat that any time soon, it's a trip worth taking.
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