“The views of candidates on the ATA [Anti-Terror Act] are relevant in weighing their standpoint on human rights and democracy – with the ATA considered by petitioners at the Supreme Court as a law that can be most dangerously used to silence political dissent.”
Critics of the anti-terror law have long assailed that it will be used to silence dissent. A year on, progressives said the law has left bank accounts of non-profit organizations and political prisoners frozen on allegations that they are financing or supporting terrorism.
Will it be enough to straighten out its vagueness and overbreadth, as argued by petitioners? Or should the high court’s magistrates strike it down due to vagueness and overbreadth that can bring more harm than the evils it promises to destroy?
“ATC’s terrorist designation is just another nefarious device concocted by those who reckon they can and must go around or against the Constitution and the rules of law, fair play and common decency to silence those who speak and clamor for change.”
It seems that time is up for reckoning on the crude, arrogant and irresponsible red-tagging campaign, waged mainly by the military and police at the behest of the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Confict or NTF-ELCAC. Created and nominally headed by President Duterte, the task force is overseen by his national…
“The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 fails miserably to protect and preserve the guarantees of human rights and civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution and therefore must be struck down.”
“They have repeatedly weaponized social media to proliferate blatant and dangerous fabrications against activists and critics through red-tagging, or when local officials post violent ‘shoot-to-kill’ threats against the public — violent threats hewn directly from the president’s own violent and terroristic threats.” By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL Bulatlat.com MANILA – Human rights alliance Karapatan said…
As of last Thursday, at least 16 petitions had already been filed before the Supreme Court, asking it to strike down the new Anti-Terrorism Act (RA 11479) – either in its entirety or several of its provisions assailed for their “vagueness” and “overbreadth/over-reach” – for violating the Constitution. The law, passage of which was railroaded…
Forty-four leaders of various organizations appealed to the high court to declare the law unconstitutional, for it “insidiously encroaches upon fundamental and constitutional rights, such arbitrary deprivation of the right to life, liberty and property and the non-observance of the right to due process and to presumption of innocence.”
“The law serves as the trigger for a hand that has long been poised to shoot. Verily, the prosecution and escalated persecution of activists, dissenters, and even ordinary citizens who dare harbor opinions contrary to the government line are not questions of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’ It becomes a question now of how large a scale…
The new Anti-Terrorism Act, which takes effect tomorrow, July 19, is being challenged before the Supreme Court by eight petitions so far filed by different groups. It should open an interesting debate, involving not just the activists and the political commentators but more so the general public which has often suffered the disastrous consequences of…