We fear. We grieve. We rage. But let us rise above this fear, and transform our grief and rage to an undying commitment to the cause of people’s rights.

By Edre U. Olalia*
Posted by Bulatlat

Naimbag nga agsapa kadakayo amin! A pleasant good morning to all! Nabara a kablaaw kadakayo amin! Militant greetings to all of you!

For the past nights, we saw how members of the House of Representatives identified with the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) administration brazenly and manipulatively moved for charter change through a senate-less Constituent Assembly. This clearly indicates that GMA and her cohorts in Congress are making all efforts to change the 1987 Constitution as a last bid, among others, to perpetuate themselves in power and for GMA as a last resort for her political survival.

This brazenness comes after a rebuff from the Supreme Court of the Malacanang-backed false people’s initiative that a revision of the Constitution cannot be made through people’s initiative. The Supreme Court even went further to declare that there appears anomalies in the gathering of the more than alleged 6 million signatures to the said initiative.

These developments are very significant particularly for human rights defenders and advocates. And the theme for your Assembly is most appropriate and timely. One of the major targets for revision is Article III or the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights as we all know is supposed to serve as a minimum safeguard against State violations or abuses of individual civil and political rights. It sets the minimum standards as far as the conduct of arrest, search and seizure, rights of the accused in detention and under custodial investigation, on due process and equal protection of the law, on privacy of communication and correspondence, freedom of speech, expression and assembly and the like.

These formal constitutional provisions, imperfect and not even followed in practice as they are, will be undermined by the draconian Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB) that is also being rushed by those in temporary power, a legislation that falls into the design of the U.S.-led global war of terrorism.

The ATB provides for a very vague and all-encompassing definition of the term terrorism. It practically would include all lawful and legitimate dissent against the present dispensation as acts of “terrorism”. Worse, it proposes longer detention without charges being filed in court for periods even beyond what is provided in the 1987 Constitution in case of suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. In other words, we see a further and more systematic legitimization of the human rights violations as practiced and customarily done by the military, police and other law enforcement agents.

Amidst all these is the escalation of political killings and abductions. According to KARAPATAN, from January to November of this year, it documented 185 political killings and the number of victims of enforced disappearances this year reached 93, the highest in the six-year presidency of Mrs. Arroyo. Majority of the victims of extrajudicial killings and abductions were members of progressive partylists and peoples’ organizations. Today it has reached 794 summarily executed with hundreds more missing and hundreds more who survived these attacks.

“Rule of law”

The extrajudicial killings common during the Martial Law regime of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos are back with a vengeance under GMA’s “rule of law.” The targets have not changed and the intentions are the same – “to wipe out insurgency” and “run to the ground” any opposition to a regime that does not represent the interests or has lost the trust and confidence of the people. The only difference is that the current policy remains an undeclared martial law.

These numbers are among the human rights violations committed under Operation Plan Bantay Laya or Operation Freedom Watch by the Macapagal-Arroyo regime. It is a five-year policy and program launched in 2002 as part of the government’s so-called “all-out war” against insurgency.

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