Anti-terror bill bad enough, yet something else is worse

Adding its powerful voice to the chorus of dissent from Filipinos objecting mightily to President Duterte’s anti-terror legislation, the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Hman Rights (OHCHR) has called the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 a “worrying” proposal that “risk[s] eroding constitutional and other legal protections.”

As numerous critics in government and civil society have pointed out, the international OHCHR agrees that the bill dilutes human rights safeguards, broadens the definition of terrorism, and expands the period of detention without warrant from three days to 14 days, extendable by another 10 days.  Furthermore, the UN agency warns that the bill’s vague definitions “may violate the principle of legality.”

Amid the nation’s focus on the COVID–19 pandemic crisis, President Duterte certified the bill for urgent passage by Congress. Last Wednesday night the House of Representatives approved it posthaste  amid widespread public outcry. The Senate had passed the bill in February, which the House adopted in toto.

On Thursday afternoon, hundreds of protesters from militant groups, wearing protective masks and observing physical distancing, gathered at the University Avenue leading to the UP-Diliman campus. They called for junking the anti-terrorism bill, which presidential spokesperson Harry Roque meekly said Duterte would not automatically sign as it would still undergo final review.

However, the Makabayan bloc in the House (led by Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate, deputy minority leader) announced it would question the bill’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court.  Other groups have vowed to do the same. Retired SC senior associate justice Antonio Carpio has foreseen such challenges to the bill’s legal validity.

The OHCHR expressed its highly critical stand on the anti-terrorism bill in a section of its 2020 comprehensive report on the human rights situation in the Philippines, made public last Thursday. High Commissioner Michele Bachelet (a two-term former president of Chile) will present the report this month to the 44th session of the UN Human Rights Council, which last year passed a resolution mandating her office to prepare the report.

Before discussing the anti-terror bill, the report observes:

“While the 1987 Constitution and certain laws contain strong human rights provisions, several laws give the authorities wide discretion to detain and charge individuals on the grounds of national security without adequate human rights safeguards.”  It mentions the Human Security Act of 2007 (the current anti-terrorism law), the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, and laws on sedition.

The Anti-Terrorist Act of 2020 was slated to replace the Human Security Act of 2007, which provided for a severe financial penalty – P500,000 fine  on the arresting police officers for each day a person wrongly arrested as suspected terrorist or terrorist supporter remains detained. The reason behind that: proponents of the bill resented being pressured to pass a counterpart anti-terrorism law to the US Patriot Act of 2001; they put in safeguards that render the enacted law almost impossible to implement.

However, the anti-terrorism bill isn’t the prime concern of the OHCHR report.

For its broader scope and deeper dire implications, the report warns against the Philippine government’s “long-standing overemphasis on public order and national security at the expense of human rights.” Such overemphasis, it points out, “has become more acute in recent years (alluding to the first half of Duterte’s six-year term). Even in the management of the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, one can see that Duterte persistently relies on the military and the police to enforce what is on his mind.

Moreover, the report calls attention to “concerns that the vilification of dissent is being increasingly institutionalized and normalized in ways that will be very difficult to reverse.”

In just the past four months of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the report says, the OHCHR documented killings of drug suspects and human rights defenders, while charges were filed against political opponents and non-governmental group workers, including for sedition and perjury.

“Red-tagging and incitement to violence have been rife, online and offline,” it adds. “The response to COVID-19 has seen the same heavy-handed security approach that appears to have been mainstreamed through the ramped-up drug war and counterinsurgency imperatives.” Hence, DILG secretary Eduardo Año tells the PNP to unrelentingly pursue the war on drugs, while the AFP spokesperson boasts that the military gives equal stress to fighting the COVID-19 contagion and the counterinsurgency war against the “communist terrorist group.”

Aptly, the OHCHR report notes that while important measures were taken to mitigate the pandemic’s economic impact on vulnerable communities, “threats of martial law, the use of force by security forces in enforcing quarantines and the use of laws to stifle criticisms have also marked the government response.”

The report concludes that “persistent impunity for human rights violations is stark and the practical obstacles to accessing justice within the country are almost insurmountable.” For instance, it says, human rights advocacy is instantly equated with insurgency. “This has muddied the space for debates, disagreements, and for challenging State institutions and policies.” The result is, it points out,  “deep distrust between Government and civil society – a rift that urgently needs to be repaired.”

In preparing the report, the OHCHR team examined available data since 2015, taking into account relevant developments prior to that year. On the basis of its own collected information, including interviews with victims and witnesses, and 893 “written submissions” received from various sources by Jan. 31, the team analyzed these and cross-checked with official data to corroborate information.

The government didn’t permit the OHCHR to conduct a visit to the country. President Duterte even publicly insulted and threatened UN special rapporteurs seeking to carry out a reglamentary country visit, last allowed in 2015.  However, the report says that government representatives held detailed discussions with the UN representatives in Bangkok, Thailand, on Feb. 13-14. In fact, the report acknowledges that the Philippine government provided “substantial written input,” including responses to two extensive lists of questions.

The big question is how the Duterte government will respond to the report’s recommendations, particularly to end the anti-drug campaign “Project Tokhang,” and the recission of Duterte’s Memorandum No. 32 (enhanced counterinsurgency campaign in Negros, Bikol, and Eastern Visayas under a state of national emergency he proclaimed in 2016), and to review EO 70 (creating the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict, or NTF-ELCAC).

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