Nobel Laureate
Supports 2nd Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on RP
Nobel Peace Prize
Winner Most Rev. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South
Africa, is one of the several supporters of the 2nd Session on
the Philippines of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) – where the
Arroyo regime, the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank (IMF-WB), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and
multinational corporations are facing charges for gross violations of
civil and political rights, economic plunder and ecological destruction,
and transgression of the Filipino peoples’ sovereignty.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
Abp. Desmond
Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner |
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Most Rev. Desmond
Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, is one of the
several supporters of the 2nd Session on the Philippines of the
Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) – where the Arroyo regime, the U.S.
government, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (IMF-WB),
the World Trade Organization (WTO) and multinational corporations are
facing charges for gross violations of civil and political rights,
economic plunder and ecological destruction, and transgression of the
Filipino peoples’ sovereignty.
“I
wholeheartedly support the
Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the Philippines in their noble cause and
pray that all of us through them will succeed in this pursuit of justice
and peace in the Philippines!” Tutu said in his message of endorsement
sent to the PPT.
|
“Our
brothers and sisters in the Philippines who are fighting for justice and
well-being for all…are being slaughtered as we speak!” he said.
“Stop the terror inflicted on
those who seek justice in your land,” he also called on President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo. “Stop using the so-called war against terrorism to
oppress and kill your own people!”
Tutu won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1984. He had risen to world fame in the previous decades as a
vocal opponent of apartheid. He is also a recipient of the Albert
Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and, in 1986, was given the Magubela
Prize for Liberty. In 2005, he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize.
He is also known as an
anti-AIDS activist and has served as honorary chairman of the Global AIDS
Alliance.
Other endorsers
Other prominent endorsements came from
2005 Right Livelihood Award (alternative Nobel) recipient and National
Chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Ms. Maude Barlow; 2005 Right
Livelihood Award recipient and founder of the Polaris Institute, Tony
Clarke, PhD; World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) official,
Cardinal Uwishaka of Mozambique; Prof. Dr. Yong Bock-Kim of the
Presbyterian Church of Korea; Secretary General Tang Shu of the Labor
Party of Taiwan; Legislator Kao Su-Mei Chin of the Non-Partisan Solidarity
Union of Taiwan; Japanese international affairs expert and Peace Research
Institute director, Professor Kinhide Mushakoji; and Professor (Elizabeth)
Jane Kelsey of the ARENA Network – Aotearoa / New Zealand.
The Asia-Japan Women’s
Resource
Center, through Secretary General Hisako Motoyama, has expressed
solidarity with the Filipino people “in their fight against brutal
powers.” The world’s largest
grassroots environmental network, Friends of the Earth
International, also sent its endorsement for the Tribunal session on the
Philippines.
The PPT’s Second Session on the
Philippines opened on March 22 in The Hague, The Netherlands. The PPT is
expected to deliver its verdict this March 25.
The petition for the PPT’s Second Session
on the Philippines was filed by: Hustisya (Justice), an organization of
human rights victims under the Arroyo administration and their relatives;
Desaparecidos, a group of relatives of victims of enforced disappearances;
Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainee Laban sa Detensyon at para sa Amnestiya (SELDA
or Society of Ex-Detainees Against Detention and for Amnesty); and the
multi-sectoral Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic
Alliance).
1980
The PPT heard the case of the Filipino
people against the Marcos regime and the U.S. government in 1980 in
Antwerp,
Belgium. The jury found the Marcos
dictatorship “guilty of grave economic and political crimes against his
own people and against the Bangsa Moro people,” and declared Marcos “unfit
to govern and subject to severe punishment for his offenses.” It also
recognized the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the
Moro National Liberation Front), which had filed the 1980 charges, as “the
legitimate representatives” of the Filipino and Moro peoples,
respectively.
The Member Jurors of the PPT First Session
on the Philippines were: Sergio Mendes Arceo, Roman Catholic Archbishop of
Guernavaca, Mexico; Richard Baumlin, Swiss legal scholar and
parliamentarian; Harvey Cox, professor of theology at Harvard University
and author of the book Secular City; Richard Falk, professor of
international law at Princeton University and noted environmentalist;
Andrea Giardina, professor of international law at the University of
Naples; Francois Houtart, professor of sociology at the University of
Louvain; Ajit Roy, Indian writer; Makoto Oda; Ernst Utrecht, professor at
Sidney University and a fellow of the Transnational Institute in
Amsterdam; George Wald, Nobel Prize winner and president of the First
Session on the Philippines; Muireann O’ Brian, Irish lawyer; and Gianni
Tognoni, coordinator of the First Session on the Philippines.
The Marcos dictatorship was eventually
ousted from power by a popular uprising in February 1986.
Jurors
Falk, Houtart, and Oda are also serving as
Jurors in the PPT Second Session on the Philippines. The other Jurors are:
Lilia Solano (Colombia), a 2005 Right Livelihood Awardee, professor of
Social and Political Sciences at the National University in Bogota,
Director of the Project for Life and Peace, and a member of the National
Movement of Victims ofState-Sponsored Crimes; Oystein Tveter (Norway), a
lawyer and former director of the Karibu Foundation, an organization
helping to rehabilitate child war victims in Rwanda; Ties Prakken, a Dutch
human rights lawyer and professor of Criminal Law at Maastricht
University; and Irene Fernandez, Malaysian trade unionist, women and
consumer rights advocate, and a founding member of the Asia-Pacific Forum
on Women, Law and Development (APWLD). Bulatlat
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