If you’re looking for the “court of last resort” for people who have long been denied justice the IPT absolutely served that purpose.

The seven-hour International People’s Court in Defense of a People Fighting Repression was convened at the Film Institute of the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman and was headed by a Presidium of Judges: Hon. Lennox Hinds, law professor at the prestigious Rutdgers University in New Jersey, USA and vice chair of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL); Hon. Hakan Karakus, a Turkish lawyer and president of the International Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL); and Hon. Irene Fernandez of Malaysia, founder and director of Tenaganita (women’s force) and nominee to the Nobel Peace Prize. Hinds, an African-American, also served as lawyer for Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned by white racists for 20 years before he became independent South Africa’s first president and himself would receive a Nobel Prize.

The Court also had a 12-member College of Jurors composed of lawyers, foreign doctors, educators, human rights defenders and activists from about eight countries.* United Nations Judge ad Litem Romeo T. Capulong led the panel of prosecutors who included lawyers Antonio Azarcon, Fatima R. Balbin, Alfonso Cinco IV, Neri J. Colmenares, Nasser Marohomsalic, Beverly Musni, Rachel F. Pastores and Ameh B. Sato. Tribunal clerks were Atty. Edre Olalia, also from the IAPL, and Jobert Pahilga.

Charges

A total of 4,207 cases of human rights violations allegedly committed by the Arroyo administration from January 2001 to June 2005 were presented to the tribunal. The cases, according to the human rights alliance Karapatan, affected 232,796 individuals, 24,299 families and 237 communities. At least 400 were victims of summary execution; 110 were victims of forced disappearances.

Twenty of those killed were human rights volunteers making the country as the most dangerous place not only for journalists but also probably for rights watchdogs.

TORCH-MARCH: Foreign and Filipino participants to the international tribunal head toward the QCMC in a torch-march for a brief rally. Photo by Aubrey Makilan

The cases range from extra-judicial killings or summary executions; assassinations, massacre, disappearances and torture; forced evacuation, looting, arson and displacement; illegal arrest and detention; and other violations constituting crimes against humanity. Used in international law, “crimes against humanity” refers to acts of murderous persecution against a body of people. The term was first used in the Hague Convention of 1907 and adopted during the Nuremberg trials against Nazi war criminals.

The tribunal was actually well-prepared. Before its convening, at least 50 other foreign delegates from about 20 countries and their Filipino counterparts organized themselves into fact-finding teams under the International Solidarity Mission (ISM) – the second in three years - and traveled to far-flung areas – in Tarlac province, Central Luzon; Mindoro Oriental; Samar and Leyte; Surigao del Sur and Sulu. The foreign delegates and Filipino counterparts listened intently as they interviewed victims or their surviving families including children and other eyewitnesses; saw crimes re-enacted; held ocular inspections of crime scenes; examined post-mortem forensics findings, police and NBI reports; and also interviewed local officials.

Not a few delegates admitted being horrified at hearing accounts of torture, of persons killed in cold blood despite cries of mercy, of bodies mutilated and faces disfigured, children beaten up and persons abducted and declared missing to this day. They wondered how all these could happen almost two decades after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.

First hand

But the ISM teams also saw first-hand the cases they were investigating – they themselves experienced being harassed and intimidated by the military. Particularly in Mindoro and Samar, mission teams were “welcomed” with veiled death threats as streamers suddenly sprouting all over the place tagged them as either “terrorist” or “communist front.” The team that was supposed to go to Sulu never took off for security problems and instead visited depressed Moro communities in Metro Manila.

These are the areas – and more - where a “war on terror” has raged since 9/11, ever since Macapagal-Arroyo pledged all-out support to U.S. President George W. Bush, Jr.’s “borderless war” against terrorism, making the Philippines as the war’s second front. But the “war on terror” has gone out of control and beyond its declared target – the small Abu Sayyaf criminal band that was supposedly ensconced in Sulu, southern Philippines and whose alleged links to Al Qaeda and other “terrorist cells” have remained in the realm of speculation – to include brutal and relentless attacks against civilians and political dissenters alike. It has threatened the people’s civil and political rights with the enforcement of the National ID System and the legislation of an anti-terrorism bill (or ATB).

Reports of human rights violations have mounted under the Macapagal-Arroyo presidency even as justice for hundreds of thousands of victims of innumerable military, paramilitary and police atrocities since the Marcos years – or for about 30 years – has remained elusive. A “reign of terror,” as UN Judge Capulong would put it in his prefatory statement before the tribunal, exists particularly in the provinces where even witnesses to crimes, human rights defenders, lawyers and church people have become victims of rights abuses themselves. Members of Congress – regular and party-list – and local officials have also received death threats.

Rewarding the war criminals

At the tribunal, prosecutors bewailed the Macapagal-Arroyo government’s predilection for rewarding the war criminals instead of punishing them, for refusing to prosecute the same perpetrators despite mountains of evidence and witnesses and for protecting those responsible by persecuting human rights defenders and lawyers instead. Particularly in the provinces, armed kangaroo courts actually proliferate – the perpetrators are the accuser, judge and executioner all rolled into one. A reign of terror has indeed replaced the rule of law and victims or their surviving families have nowhere else to turn to for justice.

If despite the piles of evidence not a single case has been pursued by the president’s own investigation and legal institutions, then that’s proof enough that Macapagal-Arroyo is culpable and criminally liable for the gross human rights violations. Capulong, an experienced trial lawyer and private impeachment prosecutor of former President Joseph Estrada, stresses that the “pattern and practice” of mounting atrocities committed by government forces against suspected rebels, alleged sympathizers and legitimate political dissenters shows a policy of politically-motivated killings that could not have taken place without the president, as commander-in-chief, encouraging or abetting them. That was the legal theory that won the class suit filed by 10,000 victims of torture against Marcos in Hawaii.

Macapagal-Arroyo, the tribunal’s prosecutors also stressed, has herself promoted or encouraged the human rights violations through her “war on terror” and for consistently refusing to uphold the civil and political rights of the victims and other targets. Alleged perpetrators, particularly Col. Jovito Palparan, have been promoted in rank by the president several times. Echoing this presidential policy, the president’s national security adviser and the Armed Forces of the Philippines have reportedly maintained hit lists, with target organizations and personalities named in a number of military journals, books and power point CDs that have circulated in recent years. Plans of political assassination have reportedly been taken up at Cabinet level.

Chief clerk of court Attorney Olalia said Macapagal-Arroyo and her co-defendant, President Bush, were served the official indictment through registered mail days earlier. If they chose, either of the two or their representatives and lawyers would have appeared for their defense. Indeed, a petite woman in black dinner attire and made-up all over – with security escorts – rushed hysterically toward the courtroom at the last minute to serve notice that the IPT was a hoax. Pandemonium. After reading her piece from what looked like a medieval-vintage paper, the woman – who introduced herself as a Malacañang official - left uttering some inaudible expletives at the judges.

Guilty

The jurors’ verdict, read by Rev. Barry Naylor, a Canon from Great Britain, found Macapagal-Arroyo and her co-accused guilty as charged for crimes against humanity. The jurors noted that Macapagal-Arroyo’s soldiers, policemen and other security forces violated the Bill of Rights of the 1987 Philippine Constitution; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the Convention against the Use of Torture and several other covenants to which the Philippines is a signatory; the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law signed by the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in 1998; the 1996 GRP-Moro National Liberation Front peace agreement; and other laws.

Mrs. Arroyo was found guilty not only as commander-in-chief of the AFP and PNP but also for her failure to prosecute the alleged perpetrators of the atrocities in four years of her presidency. She was also cited for her failure to uphold and protect the civil and political rights of the victims, among others.

Most of the victims of the human rights violations were unarmed civilians, including women and children, who were suspected by government forces as rebels or rebel sympathizers. Many came from militant people’s organizations and progressive party-list groups like Bayan Muna (people first) who were tagged by government authorities as either “communist fronts” or “terrorists.”

The tribunal judges said that the widespread abuses could serve as sufficient basis for the forfeiture of power and authority that Mrs. Arroyo continues to hold. They also asked the government to pay the victims or their surviving kin compensation and moral damages and to declare a public apology for the crimes committed.

The jurors and presiding judges faced the daunting tasks of not only rendering justice where it is due but of showing to the victims, their kin and rights watchdogs in the Philippines that all is not lost. It was explained during the presentation that the mandate, authority and legitimacy of the tribunal stemmed from a situation where a reign of terror has replaced the rule of law and where state political and legal institutions have consistently reneged on their duty to protect the weak and poor and to uphold the civil and political rights of the people.

The tribunal also served as a forum where people can express legitimate grievances against government and its instrumentalities and seek actions and remedies in the quest for justice.

Although symbolic and without any authority to enforce its verdict, the International People’s Tribunal has sent a powerful message to Macapagal-Arroyo and other perpetrators of human rights violations: You cannot forever silence truth and justice because the people’s justice will come after you in the final reckoning. Bulatlat