One scary law
PDIThe executive and the judicial branches of government would do well to heed the call of militants to defer the enforcement of the Human Security Act to give time for its vague provisions to be clarified and for additional safeguards to be adopted to protect civil rights and prevent its use to quell dissent against the Arroyo administration.
Leftist militants have said that they will challenge the legality of the law before the Supreme Court. They will also seek a temporary restraining order to suspend its enforcement. We hope that the Court will grant their petition. The Human Security Act is a scary law. Its enforcement could be twisted to serve the political ends of the enforcers. Given the records of the principal enforcers -- Acting Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo -- there is reason to be afraid that abuses would be committed in its enforcement.
The suspension of the enforcement of the law would give everybody time to reexamine its provisions and provide for safeguards that would ensure the security of innocent people and not increase their fears and heighten their feeling of insecurity.
To begin with, the definition of “terrorism" is vague: “sowing and creating widespread and extraordinary fear and panic among the populace." Who will say that a certain person or group of persons is doing this?
The Arroyo administration and its enforcers are given too much leeway in implementing the antiterror law. Administration officials said the act does not require the government to draw up implementing rules and regulations, but given a law that offers great opportunity for abuse, clear rules have to be laid down for the enforcers.
The law sets aside the constitutional guarantees of due process and presumption of innocence and allows its enforcers to detain people on mere suspicion and raw intelligence. A court before which a case has been filed may limit the right of the accused to travel. It may also place the accused under house arrest, during which he may not use telephones, cell phones, email, computers, the Internet and other means of communication. That could severely limit his access to counsel as well as to information he needs to prepare his defense.
It would even give the military a legal justification to go after people it can easily label as “terrorists." Expect the number of extrajudicial killings, which has been placed at more than 800 by the rights group Karapatan, to increase with the enforcement of the law. Expect also the number of forced disappearances to rise.
When the death penalty law was still in force, there were many cases where the perpetrators, such as rapists, killed their victims so that they would not be identified, arrested and punished. A similar situation could obtain under the antiterrorism law which imposes a fine of P500,000 a day on erring law enforcers. This provision could just make the custodians of suspects kill them so that they would not have to risk paying huge fines.
The law could be used to arrest leftist members of the panel conducting peace negotiations and eventually lead to the collapse of the talks. When this happens, the internal conflict would worsen and more human rights violations would be committed.
It could also be used to suppress legitimate dissent and social protest. For instance, protest rallies calling for the ouster of the President and workers’ strikes could be considered acts of terrorism punishable under the law.
The Human Security Act is another instance of Orwellian Newspeak being foisted on the people by the Arroyo administration, which has a perverted sense of human rights. Instead of ensuring the security of people, it will heighten their sense of insecurity. The law will strike fear in the hearts of innocent people who could, at any time, and at the whim of administration officials and the military, be falsely labeled “terrorists," hounded and watched, their communication wiretapped, their assets seized, their movements limited, their freedom curtailed, and probably, even their very lives taken without any judicial proceeding. These things were happening even before the Human Security Act became law. The situation may worsen with the enforcement of the law by an administration that has shown no respect for human rights.
We hope that the Supreme Court will grant the militants’ petition to suspend enforcement of the law so that it can be discussed publicly and more thoroughly, to the end that all possible loopholes for abuse will be plugged.
