British Columbia Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines

DOWN WITH THE ANTI-TERRORISM BILL IN THE PHILIPPINES!

April 7, 2006

The British Columbia Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines thoroughly condemns the passing of the anti-democratic House Bill 4839 because it is intended to officially sanction lawless rule, state repression and denial of civil liberties. In short, the Bill would suppress challenges to the government’s horrendous human rights record by legitimizing it openly.

The Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) regime has the worst human rights record of any government in the Philippines—quite a reputation considering the atrocities to which the legally recognized 10,000 victims of the Marcos dictatorship have attested. Some of these victims, including Satur Ocampo and Crispin Beltran, are again being persecuted with false charges of rebellion by GMA.

The state is responsible for at least 4,700 documented human rights violations since GMA stepped into the President’s seat in 2001, including over 400 political killings. The International Solidarity Mission and People’s Tribunal of 2005 clearly showed the US and GMA governments’ involvement in these crimes against humanity. Where the government may not be directly involved it allows such horrors to go on with impunity, for investigations are rarely completed if even pursued.

GMA and her cronies revealed total repugnance for democratic order and civil liberties when she declared Emergency Rule on the anniversary of the victory of EDSA (People Power) and began rounding up organizers of the mass democratic ouster movement. Having no tolerance for democratic process and representation, she has not lifted orders to arrest and detain parliamentary opponents nor released Congressman Beltran. Instead, she is endeavouring to quash civilian activists and mass movements for change by stepping up state repression. She is hoping to gather enough international support so as to close down the peace negotiations with the revolutionary National Democratic Front of the Philippines, and Moro Islamic Liberation Front, who have been engaging guerrilla armies in civil wars with the government for decades, instead of seriously finding solutions to these conflicts and the profound economic, political and social crisis that fuels them.

Meanwhile the killing and forcible abductions, illegal detentions and torture of labour leaders, progressive party representatives, church people, and other civilians of the mass movement, go on at an unprecedented rate. From week to week, the urgent action appeals flow like the blood from the numerous martyrs of the courageous Filipino people.

Bill 4839 would extend the already routine practice of arrests without warrants and arbitrary detentions that she tried to institutionalize with Emergency Rule. But her international allies and trading partners objected to that blatant measure. Therefore, she is riding high the anti-terrorism bandwagon, using the tiny criminal band, Abu Sayyaf, and its motley crew of wayward ex-Muslim National Liberation Front accomplices as an excuse to stay in line with the George W. Bush “war on terror”.

This way, GMA is attempting to don the motherly apron of caring for the nation in order to fool the people and make the unpalatable tasteful. Were we to see a clear definition of the government’s reference to “terrorism,” all would be exposed. Were we to believe that Bill 4839 would actually put an end to real terrorism, we would have reason to dance in the streets, for the government would then be obliged to arrest itself.

Let us look at the Bill’s characterization of terrorist acts. Among them is acts threatening or causing death or serious bodily harm, risk to health or safety of persons and substantial damage or wanton destruction or resorting to arson against critical infrastructure, kidnapping or serous illegal detention of civilians, and willful destruction of natural resources in land, water and air. Our constant investigations into the human rights violations in the Philippines show the Philippine government, and foreign corporations and the US Marines, guilty of such crimes in the Philippines.

BCCHRP has studied the anti-terrorism measures implemented before and since 9-11, 2001 in the Philippines, Canada and other countries. We participated in the Laws, Libel and Liberation Conference, held under the auspices of the International League of Peoples’ Struggles in Montreal in May, 2004 to examine the case of Jose Maria Sison in the context of the “war on terror.” The US declared the Philippines as the “second front in the war on terror” after Afghanistan in 2002, then declared the NDFP, Communist Party of the Philippines, and New People’s Army, as well as current and former leaders of those organizations, Sison one among them, to be terrorists. The US then beefed up its military aid and sent more troops to the Philippines (and committed obscene amounts of the American people’s money to war in the Middle East). We, along with other conference participants, determined that the principle aim of the so-called “war on terror” is to repress people’s movements for social and national liberation as the imperialist system flounders in worldwide crisis and resorts to military and fascist rule in the hopes of staying alive. Canada is deeply complicit in instituting and practicing terror against the people by remaining mum about the human rights violations in the Philippines and actively engaging in the occupation of Afghanistan.

The racism fanned in the course of the anti-terror propaganda and institutionalization of anti-democratic practices is a tool of repression. Anti-Muslim campaigns continue in the Philippines, where the Moro communities suffer constant harassment, arbitrary arrests and inhumane detentions, as they do in Canada, where the government carries out i.d. checks, harassment and arbitrary arrests and detentions of people based on racial profiles, all against a background of international anti-terrorist media hype and government fear-and warmongering talk. Bill 4839 is an endorsement of racism against the Moros in the Philippines.

BCCHRP is continuing its unrelenting work to expose and oppose the real terrorists in the Philippines in support of human rights and democracy and in solidarity with the struggles for national and social liberation in the Philippines. We are continuing to report on the International Solidarity Mission and the poverty and crimes against humanity that are ravaging the Philippines and stirring up a movement to oust GMA. We actively support the Oust GMA movement and participate in the Canadian ad-hoc National Committee for the Immediate Release of Congressman Beltran.

Furthermore, BCCHRP is helping to organize a conference to be held under the auspices of the International League of Peoples’ Struggles in Vancouver from June 16 to 19, 2006, in the name of “Towards a Just and Lasting Peace”. The conference will discuss the necessity to support national liberation struggles against foreign domination and state repression as a way to build a path towards genuine and lasting peace.

DOWN WITH THE ANTI-TERRORISM BILL!
OUST GMA!
STOP THE KILLINGS!
FREE KA BEL!
UNITE FOR SOCIAL & NATIONAL LIBERATION TOWARDS A JUST AND LASTING PEACE!