An Urgent Appeal to the Permanent Peoples’
Tribunal (PPT) of the Lelio Basso International Foundation for the Rights
and Liberation of People (Foundation)
Second
Appeal of the Filipino People
Dr. Salvatore Senese
President and
Dr. Gianni Tognoni
Secretary General
Dear Sirs:
In 1980, at
the suit of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and
the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) the Filipino and Bangsa Moro
peoples jointly presented their case before the PPT. They indicted
Ferdinand Marcos and his fascist government, the US government and
US-controlled financial institutions, multi-national corporations and
commercial banks. Specifically, the US-backed Marcos government was
charged with violations of people’s rights, violations of human rights and
crimes under international law. The US and other defendants were charged
as co-conspirators.
After a fair
hearing, all the defendants were found guilty as charged under the Algiers
Declaration by a panel of internationally-renowned jurors and judges whose
credentials for probity and independence are beyond question.
Today,
twenty-six years later, we come to this Tribunal again to indict the same
breed of oppressors and exploiters of the Filipino people and the other
peoples of the world. Their crimes under the Bush-supported Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo government continue to be inflicted upon the Filipino
people with escalating violence and brutality in what the first verdict of
this Tribunal appropriately called a neo-colonial system that breeds a
“continuing criminal enterprise” under international law.
In the 1980
verdict, which we hereby adopt and affirm, this Tribunal ruled, among
others, that:
1. Ferdinand Marcos was an illegitimate head of state
and a puppet of the US whose government did not represent the genuine
interest of the great majority of the Filipino people;
2. Philippine society was semi-feudal and
semi-colonial in character whose economy was an adjunct of the US and the
world capitalist system and bound by policies dictated by the US and the
US-controlled International Monetary Fund and World Bank;
3. The social and economic situation of the great
majority of the Filipino people is one of misery and oppression. There
was widespread poverty, corruption and injustice;
4. While the situation of the Filipino people was
unique in that the Philippines was a former colony of the US burdened by a
number of onerous treaties and agreements of a political and economic
nature, the historical exploitation and oppression of the Filipino people
was common to most of the Third World countries dominated by an expanding
capitalist economy;
5. Specifically, the first session of the PPT on the
Philippines found that the Bangsa Moro people and indigenous Filipinos
were being subjected to physical extermination and to well-planned and
accelerating programs of displacement from their ancestral lands;
6. The security forces of the martial rule of
Ferdinand Marcos, with the support and direct involvement of the US,
resorted to murder, kidnapping, torture and other brutalities and abuses
to perpetuate itself in power and the interests of foreign and local
exploiting classes; and
7. The Filipino people, having lost their most basic
rights, freedoms and democratic means of defense and expression, had
organized themselves in sectoral mass organizations and in underground
armed resistance movement which acquired their legitimacy from the
oppression itself, the relevance and validity of the national democratic
program of government that they espoused and the widespread support of the
people.
We are
victims of politically motivated killings and other crimes committed and
which continue to be committed with impunity by the US puppet regime of
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. We, our deceased and/or
disappeared relatives, belong to a wide spectrum of social classes in
Philippine society who are/were either leaders or members of the
progressive left, or ordinary Filipinos who support the struggle for
social justice and peace and democracy. Prior to this appeal and with the
support of our network we have taken the following preparations for a
second session of the PPT on the Philippines:
1. We have formed an International Coordinating
Secretariat (ICS) in Utrecht, The Netherlands which made the initial
presentation of our appeal to PPT, discussed the details and proposed the
schedule of the convening of the second session on 30 October 2006 (to
coincide with the 26th anniversary of the first session of the PPT on the
Philippines and the 30th anniversary of the Algiers Declaration) and the
formal trial part on 22 to 25 March 2007;
2. We have organized a Philippine Coordinating
Secretariat (PCS) which will implement and coordinate relevant activities
and preparations in the Philippines;
3. We have convened an initiators’ group composed of
our own newly-organized association of victims of the Arroyo and Bush
governments, two existing organizations of victims of human rights abuses,
and several well-known progressive sectoral and multi-sectoral
organizations and institutions in the Philippines whose members were
predominantly the victims;
4. We have organized our own association called
HUSTISYA! composed of victims since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the
presidency on 21 January 2001;
5. We have mobilized a legal team composed of human
rights lawyers who will assist the victims in gathering evidence and
presenting their cases before the PPT. The legal team has selected
representative cases for presentation to the PPT. It will comprehensively
document as many cases as possible and preserve the evidence for future
use in the unrelenting quest of the victims for justice; and
6. We have assembled a team of researchers and
writers composed of lawyers, human rights workers, experts and scholars
who will undertake an in-depth research and analysis of the issues
involved in the indictment, assist the prosecutors and prepare briefing
papers and materials for the jurors, judges, participants, media and other
interested parties.
It is
necessary to state briefly the current situation in the Philippines.
Philippine
economy continues to be in a chronic state of severe crisis,
underdeveloped and basically agrarian and burdened by local and foreign
debts amounting to approximately six trillion pesos (or USD 120 billion).
The servicing of the interests and principal of these huge government
borrowings had eaten up a whopping 81 percent of government revenues last
year, which is expected to increase considerably this year. The most basic
duty of government to provide social services for the poor such as health,
education and housing has been sacrificed in order to service these loans
and to support a bloated and exceedingly disproportionate budget for the
military and the police.
The workers,
peasants and slum-dwellers in the urban centers continue to live (or
merely subsist) in extreme poverty and misery, suffering from
malnutrition, hunger and poverty-related diseases. The ranks of the
unemployed continue to swell and has reached around 40% of the work force
including the so-called underemployed. The government is bankrupt, and is
maintained by imposition of more taxes, re-scheduling of existing debts
and more public borrowings at increasingly onerous terms, and the sale of
government assets. The economy is kept afloat by these stop-gap measures
and the remittances of the earnings of Filipino migrant workers abroad.
The export of labor is the major industry and the number one dollar earner
for the country. There are now more than 8 million Filipino migrant
workers at any given time scattered in 180 countries around the world.
The Macapagal-Arroyo government has considerably aggravated this situation
by collaborating with foreign monopoly capital, mainly through the US
government, the IMF-WB-WTO and multinational companies, in intensifying
the plunder of the Philippine economy through the neoliberal polices of
deregulation, liberalization, privatization and de-nationalization.
Irrefutable
evidence of betrayal of public trust, electoral fraud, electioneering and
accountability for grievous human rights violations confront the
presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. But by using bribery, threats and
the power and the resources available to the presidency, Mrs. Arroyo was
able to suppress such evidence during the impeachment process. Her
tenuous stay in office faces a daily challenge of another people’s
uprising from the broad alliance of progressive and traditional opposition
forces and coup d’etat from the restive military and police forces.
Plunder and corruption involving the First Family and top officials in her
government are rampant. The Macapagal-Arroyo government is extremely
isolated from the people and politically unstable. In order to survive,
it has resorted to the following draconian measures under an all-out war
policy in line with the US global war of terror:
1. It has become more servile and dependent on the US,
foreign economic interests and a faction of the top leadership of the
military and police establishment;
2. It has misappropriated, malversed and misused government
resources and further abused political patronage to cultivate and maintain
the loyalty of corrupt politicians, power-brokers and the bureaucracy;
3. It has abused its powers, curtailed the basic freedoms and
liberties of the people, and brazenly disregarded the rule of law; and
4. Worst, it has resorted to serial murder, abduction and
enforced disappearances, massacre, torture and other human rights abuses
against political activists, human rights advocates, militant church
people, sectoral and multisectoral mass leaders of workers, peasants,
fisherfolk, urban poor and indigenous peoples, and professionals such as
journalists, lawyers, teachers and doctors.
Sirs, in the
second session of the PPT, we propose to prove the continuing violations
by the defendants of our economic, social and cultural rights and our
right as a people to national self-determination and liberation. But we
propose that we be allowed to put in the forefront the violations of our
civil and political rights.
The human
rights situation in the Philippines today is dismal and alarming. Both the
brutality and viciousness of the attacks on the victims and the number of
victims killed or disappeared have exceeded prior records, including that
of the dreaded Marcos dictatorship. Murder, kidnapping and torture occur
almost daily nationwide. As of this date, more than 760 have been
summarily killed, more than 120 have been abducted and involuntarily
disappeared, scores have been massacred and thousands have been “invited”
for questioning by the military, detained and tortured. Whole villages
and towns in several provinces and regions have been declared by the AFP
as NPA-controlled or influenced and placed under military control. The
residents are then terrorized and forced to confess as NPA members or
supporters and to swear allegiance to the government. Curfew is imposed,
checkpoints are set up and a blockade in movement of people, food and
agricultural products is imposed. The jurisdiction and authority of local
officials is supplanted by military power. There is a complete breakdown
of the rule of law. Victims, their relatives and witnesses are terrorized
and prevented from complaining or coming out to testify. For valid
reasons, they do not trust the police, the public prosecutors and the
judges. The very few human rights workers who try to respond to the
killings are often barred from the scene of the crime, harassed and
threatened by operatives of the military. Not a few have themselves been
abducted, tortured and killed while conducting fact-finding missions.
The
killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other abuses show a clear
pattern of state policy. They are being committed with impunity. Due to
criticisms from national and international human rights organizations,
churches, and foreign government officials and fact-finding missions of
concerned organizations, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has belatedly seen the
need to issue a rhetorical statement and take a pro-forma official action,
clearly intended to deflect and defuse the continuing barrage of
criticisms against her government and cover up her own culpability and
that of her generals and some cabinet officials.
Several
human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Asian
Human Rights Commission and fact-finding missions of churches, peasants,
journalists and lawyers and tribunals initiated by concerned individuals
and organizations in the Philippines and abroad have found sufficient
evidence linking security forces of the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo government
to the political killings and declaring her accountable for these crimes.
We
respectfully appeal for a second session of the PPT on the Philippines.
We request that the appropriate verdict be rendered after hearing and
receiving our evidence on the charges.
HUSTISYA
By Evangeline Hernandez
Head Convenor
DESAPARECIDOS
By
Aleli Dew Ayroso
Coordinator
SELDA
By
Donato Continente
Coordinator
BAYAN
By
Carol Araullo
Chairperson
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