Tag: Anti-Terror Law

human rights

“It is time to bring back sanity and restore reason.”

February 3, 2021 by
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by Atty. Neri Colmenares*

OPENING STATEMENT
on Cluster 4 Issues
During Oral Arguments on the Anti-Terrorism Act of 202
02 February 2021

Your Honors, I was assigned to argue that various sections of RA 11479 violate, inter alia, the constitutional prohibition against bills of attainder and ex post facto laws.

At its core, the Anti-Terrorism Act is today’s oppressive and arbitrary legislative vehicle for the attribution of guilt and the imposition of punishment essentially without the need for trial and conviction by a court of law.

And that is the essence of a bill of attainder – a law that inflicts punishment without judicial trial.

Firstly, Your Honors, the law is intrinsically invalid because it suffers from overbreadth and impermissible vagueness. The law punishes any act, including acts which were perfectly innocent when done, for as long as the Anti-Terrorism Council, acting as roving law makers and star chamber judges, imputes vaguely defined terrorist intentions and purposes on the suspect.

After all, who would know what acts are encompassed by a law that penalizes “any act” intended to “endanger another person’s life”? or “seriously interfere with critical infrastructure”? Worse, the act need not even actually result in “endangering” a person’s life. The mere naked imputation that it intended to “endanger” a person’s life would suffice.

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governance, public health

Notes on: What next? #Covid19 #TerrorLaw #Protest

July 19, 2020 by
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We all already agree that the Duterte government’s handling of this public health crisis is probably one of the worst in the world—and certainly the worst in Southeast Asia—as both the facts and numbers reveal.

But this government is much much worse. It has used this pandemic and to declare de facto martial law. The policies on the Bayanihan We Heal As One Act are the tip of the iceberg; what is worse than the words that are there is how it is implemented on the ground, where military might and police power are king. We of course had this coming: we watched the past four years as Duterte appointed military men into the Cabinet, one after the other; we watched as he emboldened the police by telling them to kill, and condoning their abuses; we watched as he jailed Leila de Lima, unseated CJ Sereno, jailed activists on trumped-up charges; we watched as the body count grew.

This pandemic was all Duterte’s government needed to get all its other unjust, extrajudicial policies to happen. Cancel the ABS-CBN franchise based on the President’s personal gripe? Check. Pass the anti-terror law that will legalize the tagging of activism as terrorism among the violation of our rights? Check. Put Charter Change back on the table? Check. Allow the Aerotropolis airport in Bulacan to push through despite displacing fisherfolk and it environmental repercussions? Implement the jeepney phaseout that will disenfranchise thousands of jeepney drivers who are being made to go into debt for a modern vehicle in this time of crisis? Check. Disallow protests, and arrest without warrants any group, no matter how small, that dares do a protest? Check.

The latter is of course key: the past five months, we have seen how incompetent and violent, how shameless and thoughtless this government is. At any other time we would be out on the streets, raising a fist. In the time of pandemic, we are disallowed from doing so, and with a Terror Law now in place, acts of resistance like that can easily be construed as acts of terrorism. The fear is valid, but so is the anger.

Especially since it get worse. Duterte’s propaganda machinery is so head of us, with it’s game so strong, that it has been able to control the narrative of this pandemic and the government’s contingent abuses.

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human rights, peace and order

A Field Guide to the Anti-Terrorism Law Without Preempting the Courts on the Issue of its Constitutionality

July 6, 2020 by
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by Adolf Azcuna

It is Rep Act No 11479 signed into law on July 3, 2020 and effective after publication for 15 days in the Official Gazette or newspaper of general circulation in the country. The Anti-Terrorism Council and the Secretary of Justice are to draw up the IRR or implementing rules in 90 days after the law’s effectivity.

It repeals or replaces the Human Security Act of 2007 which was allegedly largely unused because of the heavy fines provided against law enforcers who violated its safeguards.

It adopts a policy against terrorism and seeks to defend the nation against it. It then defines what constitutes terrorism, penalizes proposals to commit it, terrorist training, funding and recruitment activities and membership in designated terrorist organizations. It covers foreign terrorist activities that have links to the Philippines.

It creates an Anti-Terrorism Council composed of Executive Officials that will oversee the Act’s implementation.

It provides for an elaborate system of surveillance including wiretapping by state agents of suspected terrorists upon directive or permission from the Anti-Terrorism Council with the approval of the Court of Appeals, for a period of 60 days extendible for another 30 days.

It allows arrests without judicial warrants and detention without filing of charges in court for a period of 14 days extendible for another 10 days in the name of fighting terrorism.

And it removes the heavy fines on law enforcers if they transgress the law’s safeguards and instead provides for imprisonment of up to 12 years.

The thrust of the objections and of petitions to declare all or parts of the law invalid are or are likely to be—

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