Spectacle in the Philippines

Source of picture: www.nytimes.com

Killings in the Philippines are becoming a spectacle. News, images and videos of everyday violence dominate the landscape of mainstream and social media. What is disturbing is that these killings are nowhere near plateauing.

Supposedly, only drug users, pushers and drug lords are targets of these killings. But there are a 4-year old Althea Barbon, a 5-year old Danica Garcia, a 20-year old Jefferson Bunuan and a 22-year old Rowena Tiamson, the last two are both promising college students, and nameless others whose lifeless bodies were literally disposed like garbage. They are the victims of the Philippine government's vicious and violent anti-drug campaign under President Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte came to power with a promise to suppress drugs and crimes within six months in a bloody campaign, reminiscent of what he implemented in Davao City where he ruled for decades. True enough, barely three months in office, drug-related killings have reached 3,140 and counting. Police operations under Oplan Double Barrel, a national campaign against drugs, accounted for 1,105 deaths, while shadowy vigilante groups took 2,035 lives. Police operatives seem unable to match the "efficient" carnage and shroud of immunity of the vigilante groups.

Even more disturbing are the President's statements and actuations on these killings. Confronted by media, Duterte stressed that he does not care about human rights. On possible UN investigation on extra-judicial killings, he declared that he would quit the UN. Questioned by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on the inclusion and involvement of judges in the drug list, he threatened to declare martial law. He said it before, it is going to be bloody because it is purgative.

What is more and more disturbing is that the whole spectacle is slowly dawning as a mass crime itself.

In his speeches, he sounded oblivious to the fact that as the leader of a democratic society who opts for and insists on violence as superior means to achieve a goal has the burden and stake to justify his decision. There is no escaping from a more forceful of the collective power of the governed on which an elected government heavily depends.

Duterte rallies his supporters that he is waging a revolution to get rid of drugs, crimes, and corruption. These are the realities and evils that ordinary Filipinos struggle with everyday, in which, in Galtungian view, are manifestations of violence.

Duterte has effectively unleashed an idea morphed into a belief to his ardent supporters that only violence can change dire realities, defeat evils, and overcome other violence. There may not be clear desired outcome from the elimination of these realities and evils. The violent means has become its own motive without humane end. It has become irresistible and now seen as imperative as if it were sole mandate.

That is why for Duterte and his millions of supporters, the murderous costs of the drug campaign are distracting toward the achievement of his promise and deliverance. More so, those who get in the way or potentially, including the Chief Justice, UN, media, innocent civilians and critics are to be ignored. Recently, he declared a State of National Emergency, calling the armed forces to respond to lawless violence he actually started.

His violence appears not to have a learning curve. It teaches primarily to Filipinos that violence begets violence.  Many Filipinos are beginning to find themselves again in an eerily too familiar rule that fell to disgrace not so long time ago. Ironically, he wanted that ruler to be given a hero's burial. 

For those who experienced the dictator and Martial Law, they know it will be a long struggle to end and free themselves again from this spectacle of intoxicating violence.

When several police chiefs were sacked for underperforming to meet certain targets, when the Catholic Church through Cardinal Tagle finally spoke against the killings, when the victims' sisters, mothers, fathers, brothers, families, friends and neighbors become actors and not merely spectators of this bloody spectacle, when ordinary people realize that this violence is not capable of changing their lives, and when his fanatics turn into disillusioned followers, they can all signal an eventual end to this enduring state of national emergency.

What is disturbing though is if Duterte sees no end. Six more months? It literally means more killings.

This spectacle of killings must end. We as a people could not simply watch one life after another being sacrificed for the deliverance of a promise and for an egoistic and rhetoric war. It's time to bring the curtain down. Lights off.

- END -

Human Rights and Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines: A Note on the Arroyo Government (2001-2007)

July 2007 is an eventful month for human rights in the Philippines under the Arroyo government. First, after a great deal of debate and delay, an anti-terrorism law or officially known as Human Security Act (Republic Act 9372) has finally been passed. Critics of the new law say that it is subject to the abuse of the government and therefore would lead to more human rights violations. The government, on the other hand, believes that the new law would strengthen the institutions like the courts and police in protecting the human rights of the citizens against terror. Second, just a day after the passage of the Human Security Act into law, a two-day National Consultative Summit on Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances: Searching for Solutions was held under the initiative of the Supreme Court and was participated in by stakeholders and duty-bearers of human rights. Third, a concurrent two-day summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on human rights to look into the creation of a regional human rights commission was also held in Manila. With these events, human rights and security have again taken center stage among the concerns and considerations for our path and vision of the common future of the country, region, and even of the world. Fourth, the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of the president merely mentioned sparingly the state of human rights especially extrajudicial killings. She just urged the Congress to enact laws, but was short of commanding the military and police to stop the killings and other human rights violations.

It would be noted that 48 member-states of the United Nations (UN) including the Philippines ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. In his book, International Standards and Agreements on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Reynaldo Ty (1989) defines a declaration as “a formal statement which refers to the common standard of achievement” (p. 3). Being a declaration, it is not legally binding but it sets a common reference to human rights among the signatories and, in fact, has gained, over time, international acceptance and status as standards against which either compliance or violation of the provisions in the declaration is monitored.

Signatories of the declaration recognize that these standards impose obligations, duties and commitments on them to comply and enforce in their respective territorial state. Donnely (2003), the author of In Defense of the Universal Declaration Model, points out that the states have become the “new exclusive instrument for implementing internationally recognized human rights” (p. 40). In other words, the practice of human rights heavily relies on the political, economic, and cultural dynamics of a certain state. This monism follows the generally accepted principle that the enforcement of human rights is in the hands of the states (Ty, 1989).

Although in principle the declaration is not legally binding, the Philippine state through the doctrine of incorporation has adopted the declaration as part of the law of the land (Ty, 1989). The Philippine Constitution of 1987 expressly states this incorporation in Article II, Section 2; “The Philippines renounces war as an instrument of national policy, adopts the generally accepted principles of international law as part of the law of the land and adheres to the policy of peace, equality, justice, freedom, cooperation, and amity with all nations.”

Furthermore, being a signatory of the declaration makes its adoption and incorporation into the national laws more compelling and valid. However, being a signatory does not necessarily guarantee and translate into full compliance and enforcement. Thus, can being a signatory to the declaration make a difference in the protection and respect of human rights?

In his article, Do International Human Rights Treaties Improve Respect for Human Rights, Neumayer (2005) finds out that “the beneficial effect of ratification of human rights treaties is typically conditional on the extent of democracy and the strength of civil society groups as measured by participation in non-government organizations (NGOs) with international linkages”(p. 926). He concluded that the ratification might not have any effect or might even lead to further human rights violations without democratic spaces and presence of strong civil society.

This paper looks at the case of the present Philippine government, as a signatory to the declaration, and how it performs in the field of human rights particularly with regard to the spate of extrajudicial killings by revisiting the reports of Melo commission and UN-designated Special Rapporteur, Philip Alston, on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Then, the paper proceeds with a discussion on the effect of ratifying an internationally-accepted declaration on the Philippine government in the hope of an end to the killings.

Extrajudicial killings under the Arroyo government

The Philippine government recently has been under intense local and international criticisms for the unabated extrajudicial killings of mostly activists and journalists since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ascended to power in 2001. On its 1983 report about Political Killings by Governments, Amnesty International (AI), an international organization that works for the protection of human rights, defines extrajudicial killings as those killings “committed outside the judicial process and in violation of national laws and international standards forbidding the arbitrary deprivation of life” (pp. 5-6). It would be recalled that only in June 2006 that the Philippines repealed its death penalty law. Therefore prior to June 2006, the Philippine government had judicial killings sanctioned by the death penalty law of the state. The extrajudicial killings referred to by AI are also alternatively called political killings because they are deliberate and directed to neutralize or silence opposition members. To substantiate its allegation on the rising extrajudicial killings, AI (2006) documented 51 extrajudicial killings in the Philippines for the first six months of 2006 and 66 killings in the whole of 2005. It estimated that for the whole year of 2006, the numbers of killings ranged from at least 61 to 96 incidents. This disturbing high number of killings in 2006 could be attributed to the Arroyo government’s February 16, 2006 -declaration of an all-out war against the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Moreover, on February 22, 2007, a news report from the online edition of The Independent, a newspaper in United Kingdom, revealed that according to a local human rights group, Karapatan, at least 832 people were either killed or declared missing since Arroyo assumed the presidency in 2001. In the weekly Philippine Daily Inquirer’s (PDI) Talk of the Town for July 22, 2007, it quoted Karapatan’s last count of extrajudicial killings which is currently pegged at 863 deaths. These killings captured headlines and international attention in 2005 and 2006 when successive and patterned killings and disappearances of unarmed activists and non-combatants known to be critical of the Arroyo government were reported.

The same 1983 AI report on political killings by government, drawing from the 1982 International Conference on Extrajudicial Executions in the Netherlands, identified the “preconditions” or indicators of political killings and other human rights violations by governments. These possible preconditions are “the imposition of a state of emergency, martial law, or other states of exception; the occurrence of other human rights violations such as irregular arrests and detentions, ‘disappearances’ and torture; the identification of certain groups as ‘enemies;’ claims of ‘encounters’ with armed groups resulting in deaths” (p. 103). Prophetic as the report might be, these preconditions or indicators of the killings existed in 2006.

Incidentally, these extrajudicial killings occurred when the Arroyo government was seriously challenged by a broad coalition of anti-government forces which included some military personnel, recently-resigned cabinet secretaries, former president, sitting senate president, a number of Catholic bishops, and the influential Makati Business Club over the wiretapped conversation of Arroyo and a Commission on Election (COMELEC) commissioner named Garcillano at the height of counting of votes in the 2004 presidential election. The taped conversation which is now known as “Hello Garci” revealed the alleged large-scale manipulation of votes in certain parts of Mindanao in favor of Arroyo. As a result, the Arroyo government was hounded by a legitimacy issue which it avoided to confront and address in both legal and informal processes such as an impeachment proceeding and interviews. This unresolved charge of cheating in the election contributed to its plummeting popularity. In the Social Weather Station’s (SWS) survey of Arroyo’s net satisfaction ratings, double-digit negative net ratings were registered in the whole two years of 2005 and 2006 with negative 33 as the lowest ever satisfaction rating given to a president in the post-Marcos era. In fact, only Arroyo has posted negative ratings in the SWS survey among the presidents, from Aquino to Arroyo. These negative ratings could be the most telling proof of the unpopularity and dissatisfaction of the people on the president.

Previous governments, from Aquino to Estrada, also had a history of extrajudicial killing or “salvaging” during their terms. Muyot (1992) talked about the human rights in the Philippines during the Corazon Aquino government (1986-1992) which was responsible for the restoration of democratic structures after the fall of the authoritarian regime by Marcos. Yet there were 167 cases of salvaging as reported by the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP) during the entire Aquino’s term. In the first year of Fidel Ramos government (1992-1998) with which victory was questioned while having the smallest plurality of votes in the Philippine electoral history, the 1993 human rights report of the Philippine Human Rights Information Center (PhilRights) documented 61 salvaging cases. Ramos, a military man and former chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), was endorsed by Aquino, who had experienced nine coup attempts in her term, to succeed her. In 1998, Joseph Estrada was popularly elected by 11 million Filippinos, more than double of his closest rival. On the Estrada government’s last year before EDSA Dos, the PhilRights (2001), citing report from TFDP, pointed to the “extrajudicial killings in the form of salvaging continued to haunt the populace with 8 identified cases of salvaging, all without reports of arrests” (p. 39). Then, EDSA Dos, another people power revolution that ousted Estrada from office due to alleged massive corruption and unexplained wealth, happened where Arroyo as the vice-president of Estrada assumed office in 2001.

There seems to be a relationship between legitimacy and human rights record. Donnely (2003) concedes that “political legitimacy is increasingly judged by and expressed in terms of internationally-recognized human rights” (p. 23). Although the legitimacy issue of Arroyo government stems from its alleged cheating in the 2004 election, the extrajudicial killings and other acts inimical to human rights further erode and put under question its political legitimacy to govern in the eyes of both national and international constituencies. In the report of AI (1983), Political Killings by Governments, most governments that committed these killings were struggling and having problems with legitimacy issues in their own countries.

Dark days that were 2006

In its effort to hold on to power despite its growing unpopularity and legitimacy issue as narrated in the running account by the online PDI, the Arroyo government issued controversial executive and administrative orders, and proclamations which were later found by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. One of which is Proclamation No. 1017 which put the whole country into a state of emergency by which the AFP was mandated to suppress lawless violence. This proclamation was issued in February 2006 after the Arroyo government had allegedly discovered the collusion among elements of the broad spectrum of the political actors – from extreme left (communists) to extreme right (disgruntled soldiers) and in between a sector of civil society and middle ground forces – to topple the government. With Proclamation No. 1017, the Arroyo government undertook actions which further eroded its human rights record down the sink. It raided and closed down one national newspaper, issued a prescribed guideline and standard for media practitioners in reporting the news, had the six leftist party-list representatives arrested without preliminary investigation on the charge of rebellion, and arrested a former cabinet secretary and her group for organizing a public assembly without a permit. It was at this time when the government banned protests and demonstrations and in the process, undermining the country’s democratic values of free speech and citizens’ right to assembly and express their sentiments and grievances. Then, the killings and disappearances started to be reported in the news. Many people likened those dark days and the present circumstances similar to the Marcos dictatorial years. The impression sent to the people by these blatant violations of human rights particularly the killings and disappearances is that there is a price to be paid for being vigilant and assertive of rights.

The victims as “enemies of the state” (Melo Commission report)

To denounce this growing impression, the Arroyo government, as posted on its website, officially created an independent commission under Administrative Order (AO) 157 on August 21, 2006 to investigate these extrajudicial killings. A retired justice of the Supreme Court, Jose Melo, headed the commission with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) director, chief state prosecutor, an academician from University of the Philippines, a lawyer, and a Catholic bishop as members. Many critics and skeptics of the Melo commission pointed out that the commission would find itself in a bind because all members of the commission were handpicked by the government which is charged of masterminding these killings. Citing the impartiality, credibility and effectiveness problems the commission needs to address to be able to perform its mandate, families of the victims and even the survivors decided to boycott the proceedings.

For a time, the Melo commission report was unavailable to the public. The government which received the report and was keeping it had said that the report was incomplete and unfinished to be released to the public. However, after strong public pressure, the government finally released the report to the media.

The investigation revealed that the victims of these killings who were mostly activists and journalists were often tagged as “enemies of the state” by the elements of the military. There was no hard evidence though directly implicating the military establishment having an official policy sanctioning the extrajudicial killings. However, it was found out that there were some rogue officers in the military who endorsed these killings.

The commission, on its official report as posted on the website, reminded the government that “in a democratic and civilized state such as ours, one must uphold and observe the rule of law, the principles of justice, and the system and rules of how it is dispensed – from investigation to arrest, to inquest, and to trial” (p. 2). In other words, extrajudicial killings are not to be sanctioned and tolerated. The commission also clarified the concept of command responsibility. The concept does not only apply to the acts authorized and known by the superiors, rather it also includes the instances when the superior fails to stop and investigate the acts committed by his/her subordinates.

In short, the Melo commission acknowledged the increasing number of the killings of people who were classified to be “enemies of the state” and the culpability of some rogue elements in the military who perpetrated and sanctioned these killings.

“Order of Battle” against groups and individuals (Alston report)

The spate of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines has raised alarm and concern in the international community including the UN, European Union, United States, and Japan. At the invitation of the Arroyo government, Philip Alston, a Special Rapporteur of the UN on extrajudicial killings, visited the Philippines and conducted his own investigation from February 12-21, 2007. On his preliminary note for the UN General Assembly-Human Rights Council on March 22, 2007 which is available on the internet, Alston acknowledged a number of “institutional response at the national level,” such as the creation of Melo commission, Task Force Usig, special courts tasked to hear and try cases of extrajudicial killings, Presidential Human Rights Committee as distinct from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), and the augmentation of fund of the CHR to better handle cases of the killings.

Similar to the Melo report, Alston also characterized the killings as product of tagging the victims as enemies of the state. He also mentioned about a leaked copy of a document signed by senior military and police officials describing the “order of battle” drawn by the AFP against groups and individuals who were to be neutralized.

Moreover, Alston pointed out why the responses made by the Arroyo government to mitigate these human rights violations were ineffective, and sometimes of little use because of the accountability problem which could have checked the abuses of authorities. For example, the executive branch of the government limited the performance of the legislative branch in its oversight function in the execution of laws by the military by requiring those invited to the legislative inquiry to ask permission from the president through the executive secretary. And normally, permission is not granted except for budget hearings. Likewise stated on Alston’s preliminary note, another example is that there seems to be “a passivity, bordering on an abdication of responsibility, which affects the way in which key institutions and actors approach their responsibilities in relation to such human rights concerns” (p. 5).

Among his recommendations to address these killings and halt the further killings of activists are the termination of military officers from issuing public statements that relate groups or individuals to the armed struggle waged by the Communist Party of the Philippines – New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), restoration and respect of the oversight function of the Congress, and the call for the Supreme Court to make use of its “constitutional powers over the practice of law” to remind the prosecutors of their duty to the public to respect and protect human rights and to speed up the investigations and cases involving the killings. The last recommendation was realized when a summit on extrajudicial killings was conducted under the initiative of the Supreme Court.

Conclusion

As a signatory to the UDHR, the Philippines has accepted the obligations, duties and commitments that the declaration entails. States that ratified it and are strong in respecting human rights and other international organizations that are concerned with human rights have put pressure on the Philippine government to abide by the principles of the declaration which are fundamental to living as human beings. Signatories or parties to an agreement “generally aspire to comply in the spirit of ‘pacta sunt servanda’ (agreements are to be kept and honored)” (Neumayer, 2005, p. 928). When there are grave human rights violations anywhere in the world, “the community for protecting human rights seems to be becoming the society of states” (Donnely, 2003, p. 41). In this so-called society of states, there are states more than equal than the others. In short, among the sovereign states, the powerful ones have leverage over the weaker ones in terms of trade, aid, labor migration, investment, and among other things. Donnely (2003) noted that the international immunity that sovereign states used to enjoy has been undermined by unrelenting and strong pressures and demands from the powerful states over the weaker ones.

Examples of these pressures and demands from the powerful states are the actions of the United States (US), European Union (EU), and Japan. According to the official website of the United States Senate, its Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines: Strategies to End the Violence on March 14, 2007. The EU Ambassador to Manila, Alistair MacDonald, made a comment that the Arroyo government is “not doing enough on killings amid outcry” after an EU assessment team finished its mission to look how EU could help solve the killings, as quoted in the Channel News Asia website on June 30, 2007. The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), on its website on January 16, 2007, lauded the appeal of a group of 14 Japanese non-government organizations (NGOs) to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to act more on the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines than just speaking about the killings with the Arroyo government when the Prime Minister visited the Philippines. Some of the influential international organizations that raised concerns about the killings in the Philippines are the AI, New York-based Human Rights Watch, and AHRC. As fellow signatories, powerful EU countries, US, and Japan continuously put pressure on the Arroyo government that led to the creation of Melo commission and invitation of UN Special Rapporteur by the Arroyo government to look into and shed light to these killings.

These pressures were borne out of the lobbies and advocacy campaigns of the civil society groups with effective networks globally which brought the extrajudicial killings to the attention of the international community. Neumayer (2005) earlier indicated that the positive impact of human rights treaties depends on the kind of democracy and participation and effectiveness of civil society with international linkages. Philippine democracy as measured in terms of press freedom and independence of judiciary is vibrant, particularly in the judiciary where policies of the Arroyo government that hampered and infringed human rights were found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Ferrer (1997), in the book Civil Society Making Civil Society, describes the Philippines “as a strong civil society type” because of the participation of NGOs in the significant part of the country’s history like the two EDSA revolutions (p. 1). The two criteria cited by Neumayer, extent of democracy and strong and active civil society, are both present and dynamic in the Philippines. Clearly, these positive signs give hope for an end to the killings.

Aside from these factors, the declaration of the Arroyo government, as posted on its website, that its last three years in power will be for “legacy-building” phase is welcome and good news for human rights advocates. Certainly, the government does not want to be remembered for the human rights violations and extrajudicial killings. As the president said in the 2007 SONA taken from the inquirer’s website, “We must wipe this stain from our democratic record.” Vulnerably, the people will have to believe and take those words from the president who has the power to stop the extrajudicial killings and, at the same time, has a recent history of taking back her own words. God bless the Philippines!

Extrajudicial Killings in the Philippines and the International Community

Now that the Philippines has its new President, it is time that its government acts on the crimes allegedly committed by the past administration such as extrajudicial killings.

Should the international community embodied by the United Nations act on the extrajudicial killings committed by sovereign states'apparatus like the military? How would it act in conjunction with the incoming new government?

I would categorically say YES for two reasons. First, if the past Philippine government failed to prevent the spate of more than 900 extrajudicial killings since 2001 done on its targeted population, the "international community" like the UN should respond by investigating the killings, recommending policy or structural changes to prevent recurrence and perpetuation of the killings, or as a last resort, sanctioning the Philippines as a member-state. Actually, the UN Special Rapporteur on Summary Execution, Philip Alston, released its final report on the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines on November 27, 2007. The main finding of the report is that the Philippine military is behind killings. After the release of the report, there has been a considerable decrease of extrajudicial killings.

Second, if the failure of the Philippine government does not lie on its inability to implement laws and order but on its conscious inaction or complete disregard of the lives and human rights of the victims, the United States (US), Japan and other states can withhold financial, development, and military aid to the Philippine government to bring the case to its attention and express their disgust and opposition on the Philippine government's inaction or disregard to human rights. This withholding of substantial aid can force the Philippine government to act on the killings and improve its human rights record in the watchful eyes of the international community.

Both reasons I presented here do not take away the responsibility of the Philippine government on its people. It is still the Philippine government that is mainly responsible for the enforcement and protection of human rights in the Philippines. It is not my argument that the international community or any state/s should take over another state or intervene militarily without the consent of the affected state. In the case of the Philippines and extrajudicial killings, the magnitude and scale of the human rights violations would not warrant the use of force by external entities to directly stop the killings. It is unimaginable in this case.

However, there are examples where the use of force was used to stop and prevent further violations of human rights. The cases of Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia, East Timor, and among others, come easily to my mind. The justification of the use of force on these cases lies in the magnitude and scale of human right violations, the breakdown of states responsible for the protection and implementation of human rights, the dire need for humanitarian assistance of the people, and implementation of international law and Geneva protocols. The Kosovo case is an exception to the breakdown of a state since Serbia, a functional and strong state, asserted its sovereignty and jurisdiction over Kosovo and its people.

I would not argue against these examples on the use of force to stop the impunity of gross human rights violations or crimes. The international community should not watch on the sideline the conduct of these horrendous crimes. It should respond and even intervene to stop the execution of these crimes. What I would argue is the use of force applying a concocted argument to stop the same crimes or human rights violations or weapons of mass destruction or collectively known as terrorism. When the US and its coalition used force and invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, they justified their acts on the basis of the war on terror. According to their rhetoric, they were preventing acts of terrorism. In the same manner that the international community should not simply watch what was happening in Kosovo and alike, the international community should not just watch the use of force of the US and its coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sadly, I am disappointed in the way the international community has become ambivalent in its response with the use of force or intervention. The international community selects what to, where to, how to, who, and why respond. And its selection is starkly influenced and shaped by the superpowers. Are we then really an international community? Or simply international? What I know about a community is that it supports each other and members are interdependent. In reality, there is dependency of weak states to superpowers. This brings doubt to my mind if the international is really a community, but that will be another paper.

Terrorism, Politics and Human Rights: A View from a State

“Peace and war are the products, respectively, of good and bad states.”
- Kenneth Waltz, 1959, p.114

Introduction

Last September 12, 2007, Dr. Walter Perron, Head of the Law Department at the University of Freiburg, Germany talked about the “Challenges of Fighting International Terrorism” in a panel discussion organized by the International Law and Human Rights Department of University for Peace. At the open forum, I asked this question; after six years of 9/11 attack on the United States (US) and the consequent global war on terrorism initiated and financed by the US, is the world getting safer today or more dangerous?

Gilpin’s theory on hegemonic war reverberates in the US global war on terror as US reasserts its supremacy when its status as the most powerful State in the world was challenged by Al-Queda network (Gresham, 1993). How do other States respond to this hegemonic global war against terrorism?

Terrorism has shaken the way human rights are viewed. The terror sown by 9/11incident in New York, 3/11 train bombings in Madrid, and 7/7 train bombings in London caused various States to adopt anti-terrorism and rights-restricting measures that would curb and prevent the threat of or actual terror attack in their own territorial jurisdictions. And these States which strongly vow to end terrorism and ceaselessly pursue the people who espouse terrorism are known to be the pillars and models of present democratic systems – USA, United Kingdom, and Spain. In their fight against global terrorism, there are rights that were compromised, such as, rights to privacy, free speech, and movement. Privacy is infringed to be able the authorities to discover and trace evidences of terror plots, free speech is limited not to inflame and aggravate the ethnic, religious, and other emotionally-charged conflicts, and movement to secure the suspects in the custody of authorities (http://www.amnesty.org, 2005). Even the rights of sovereign States such as, Afghanistan and Iraq that hosted Al-Queda operatives and posed as challengers in Gilpin’s theory, to non-interference, non-intervention and self-determination were said to be derogated in pursuit of this global fight against terrorism.

In 2003, United Nation's Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a ministerial-level meeting of Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee as quoted in the website of United Nations Information Service;
Domestically, he said, the danger was that in pursuit of security, crucial liberties were sacrificed. Internationally, the world was seeing an increasing use of the "T-word" of terrorism to demonize political opponents, throttle freedom of speech and the press, and delegitimize legitimate political grievances. Similarly, States fighting various forms of unrest or insurgency were finding it tempting to abandon political negotiation for the deceptively easy option of military action.
The world’s attention is on the global scale of the war on terror. The news and controversies revolve around the international or interstate level like the US-led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. There seems to be a lack of attention on the local and national level of this war on terror. It is an attempt of this paper to fill such lack of information and attention on the national level of one State. Following a traditionalist approach, the unit of analysis here is a nation-state (Dinar, 2000).

This paper presents how a State like the Philippines could utilize this global war on terror to its advantage against valid and legitimate opposition in its own turf. It is argued here that the world is getting more dangerous because a State with its immense power could appropriate the war’s scale and scope within its fancy and imagination of the application and definition of terrorism to its citizens. This kind of appropriation of power or politics and war on terror are key challenges to peace in the Philippines as they undermine human rights and political stability.

The Philippines: In Perspective

Projecting as leading the fight in the Southeast Asia against terrorism and courting the US for financial support, the Philippine State issued orders and used force restricting and curtailing human rights to hold on to power when its legitimacy was being questioned while it was pursuing war in Southern Philippines against Abu Sayyaf and the New People’s Army (NPA) of the Communist Party of the Philippines (both terrorist groups in the US list). [In the subsequent used of the State, it would refer to the Philippine State.]

Having undergone two people power revolutions (1986 and 2001), the State was wary of a repeat of another people power. The 1986 people power revolution toppled a dictator, Marcos, who infamously committed human rights abuses. As a result, the 1987 and still the present Constitution is full of guards and shields against potential human rights abuses.

Legitimizing the global war on terror locally

The Abu Sayyaf (Bearer of the Sword, in Arabic) hugged the international limelight when it hostaged several foreigners including US citizens in Sipadan, Sabah, Malaysia in 2000. Previously driven by Islamic ideology and with alleged ties to Al-Qaeda, the Abu Sayyaf launched kidnappings, bombings, beheadings, and massacres in Southern Philippines. With the highest estimated number of 1,200 fighters, it has stronghold in the islands of Basilan and Sulu which are populated mostly by Muslims (Clark, 2002). Many of its fighters are believed to have trained in Afghanistan. Its notoriety claimed a spot in the US list of terrorist groups with rewards reaching 5 million dollars each for information leading to the capture or death of its core leaders.

Another group which is on the US list of terrorist is the Maoist-inspired NPA which has been fighting the State for almost 40 years now. The State has been suspecting that most activists are members of the NPA (http://pia.gov.ph, 2006).

Cloaked by this global fight against terrorism, the State waged an all-out war against the New People’s Army and Abu Sayyaf with full support from the US. As of this writing, it is still on all-out war against Abu Sayyaf in Basilan and Sulu islands and NPA.

Politics and legitimacy issue of the State

While the war in Basilan and Sulu was going on, the political condition of the State was in trouble. The State was facing internal issues and concerns that rocked and questioned its exercise of and reason for power. It was charged with legitimacy issue by allegedly having cheated in the 2004 presidential election as documented by a wiretapped conversation between President Arroyo and an election officer. The coming out of the wiretapped tape in 2005 led to the unmasking of the enormous power and politics of the State to defend itself and take control of its stock. Wolff (1970, 3) defines politics as “the exercise of the power of the state.”

Due to the legitimacy issue, politics became a household name and pervaded the national scene and everyday lives of Filipinos. The issue moved many people including 10 senior government officials who resigned, a former president, a sitting senate president, an influential business group, and some Catholic bishops to call for the resignation of President Arroyo in 2005. Mass protests and rallies reminiscent of the people power revolutions were occurring nationwide especially in the capital Manila. President Arroyo barely held on to power until Proclamation No.1017 was declared in February 2006 to quell the reported collusion among leftist groups, disgruntled soldiers, and civil society to oust her from power. The State was in a national emergency with which President Arroyo called on the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to suppress lawless violence or terrorism acts. Justifying its actions, the State invoked public good, order, and security to override some human rights like freedom of speech, right to assembly, freedom to dissent, warrantless arrests, among others. With 1017, mass protests calling for the resignation of the president were banned and dispersed violently by police’s batons and water canons. Opposition members from the leftist groups were arrested without preliminary investigation for plotting a rebellion.

C. Wright Mills (as cited in Arendt, 1970, 35) states that “all politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence.” Asserting its power and clearly without the backing of the majority of its people, the State used “violence as the most flagrant manifestation of power” to control the provoked citizenry (Arendt, 1970, 38). It counted and depended heavily on the support and force of the military to be able to keep its power intact. As Dinar (2000) puts it, the essence of the State’s security is its power. Thus, it started to eliminate threats to its security and, in the process, it committed various human rights violations.

“State-sponsored” human rights abuses (extrajudicial killings)

Arendt (1970, 56) indicates that “violence appears where power is in jeopardy.” The opposition sought the intervention of the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of Proclamation 1017. The High Court ruled that some provisions were constitutional and some were not. The decision (G.R. No. 171396) further stressed that, “One of the misfortunes of an emergency, particularly, that which pertains to security, is that military necessity and the guaranteed rights of the individual are often not compatible” (http://www.supremecourt.gov.ph). The State interpreted the ruling as favorable because it saw this necessity for military force to thwart national security threats. It lumped together the terrorists, rebel groups and opposition members as security threats which needed to be “neutralized” as enemies of the State. This resulted to unabated extrajudicial killings which were done systematically against political activists known to be critical of the State.

The Amnesty International (AI) 1983 report on Political Killings by Governments describes extrajudicial killings as those killings “committed outside the judicial process and in violation of national laws and international standards forbidding the arbitrary deprivation of life” (pp. 5-6). The same 1983 AI report enumerated the “preconditions” or indicators of political killings and other human rights violations by States. These preconditions are “the imposition of a state of emergency, martial law, or other states of exception; the occurrence of other human rights violations such as irregular arrests and detentions, ‘disappearances’ and torture; the identification of certain groups as ‘enemies;’ claims of ‘encounters’ with armed groups resulting in deaths” (p. 103). It would be noted that most of the preconditions or indicators of the killings existed in 2005 and 2006 in the Philippines.

In July 2007, the Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted a human rights group in the Philippines, Karapatan, that its latest count of extrajudicial killings reached 863 since President Arroyo assumed office in 2001 (http://www.inquirer.net, 2007). In 2005, AI recorded 66 extrajudicial killings and there were approximately 61-96 killings in 2006. This prompted the United Nations (UN) to send its Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings on February 12-21, 2007 to investigate the spate of killings in the Philippines and found out that the killings were results of the State’s tagging of victims as enemies of the State (Alston, 2007). Alston uncovered direct links of some rogue elements of the military on the killings of activists and journalists, although the State was in denial of the findings.

Conclusion

Since 1017, the State has been on the offensive of tightening its grip on power. It resorted to violence as a “last resort to keep the power structure intact against individual challengers” (Arendt, 1970, 47). In the process, human rights laws have been violated. It is regrettable because “human rights law provides human beings with protection from abuse on the part of governments and other actors that hold power” (Griffin, 2007). Supposedly, human rights are protected by the State’s Constitution and even international covenants in which the State is a signatory. In this case, human rights became collateral damages on the appropriated war on terror by the State.


In the name of global war on terror, the State has legitimized its own war. However, Arendt (1970, 52) claims that violence would never be legitimate although justifiable. No matter how the State veils its own war for its survival, it can never generate power and rule as it wants to. It only gets its own position more dangerous and unstable. Sadly, it also brings the whole country in trouble.

Recently, the State passed into law an anti-terrorism act or Human Security Act of 2007. The opposition feared that this law would further the license of the State to suppress and curtail more human rights for its own good. It is politics, again. And the State is on top of things with its immense power at its disposal. As President Arroyo warned in her 2007 State of the Nation Address, “From where I sit, I can tell you, a President is always as strong as she wants to be.” It sounds like more trouble and danger to come for human rights in the Philippines.