Presentation at the International Conference for Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines

Quezon City, Philippines
20 July 2013

PANEL 4. Best Practices: International solidarity campaigns

By JAN FERMON ¹
Spokesperson, Progress Lawyers Network
Deputy Secretary General, International Association of Democratic Lawyers

and MATHIEU BEYS ²
Member of international defense team of Jose Maria Sison

The inclusion of Jose Maria Sison in de EU listing of terrorists: criminalization as part of a political and diplomatic campaign

To develop a correct defense strategy in a highly political case such as that of the terrorist listing of Prof. Jose Maria Sison it is necessary to understand the political significance of such a measure.

Prof. Sison was included in the US assets freezing list of foreign terrorists on the 12^th of August 2002 and in a national Dutch similar list on the 13^th of August. On August 14, 2002, the Presidency of the Philippines adopted a directive with 9 guidelines for conduct towards the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA). These guidelines welcome the inclusion in the list and reflect a clear choice in favor of a “military option.” Later when Joma Sison’s defense announced that it would challenge the inclusion in the Dutch list that was withdrawn and at the demand of The Netherlands Joma Sison was included in October 2002 in the EU terrorist listing. As you probably know that decision was finally and for good quashed by a judgment dated 30^th September 2009 of the European Court of First Instance in Luxemburg.

These few facts provide precious information on the political background of the listing. Especially the proximity of the dates is a clear indication that the inclusion of Sison in the list was an internationally coordinated action involving the Government of the Philippines, the US administration and the EU.

We should understand why each of these three entities engaged in such coordinated and vicious attack on Prof. Sison. The US, the Manila government and the EU each had their own partially overlapping interests.

The Government of the Philippines signed in September 1992 The Hague Joint Declaration with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). That declaration is a clear roadmap for the peace negotiations and is binding on both parties.

The parties committed themselves to formal negotiations to resolve the conflict with the goal of “a just and lasting peace.” The declaration also states that negotiations will be conducted “in accordance with the mutually acceptable principles such as sovereignty, democracy and social justice.” In addition, the declaration states that the bargaining agenda includes four substantial points: “human rights and international humanitarian law, socio-economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, and the cessation of hostilities.”

However, it became clear quickly that the Manila government, dependent upon the support of the US and subservient to the interests of the ruling classes in the Philippines, was unable and unwilling to deliver on any of these points. A Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) was concluded in March 1998. Both parties committed to protect the human rights of Filipinos, especially the workers, peasants, and the poor, to fully respect international humanitarian law in the midst of conflict. The agreement covers all human rights, civil, political, economic, social, and cultural, and explicitly refers to international legal instruments. In addition, it contains a commitment from the government to withdraw certain laws to ensure special treatment for political offenses, to respect the rights of workers as defined by the International Labor Organization, etc.

Concerning the conduct of hostilities, the parties seek to respect the general principles and accepted standards of international humanitarian law. The agreement included specific commitments of the government, such as refraining from setting up paramilitary groups. In addition, it required the parties, as an obligation, to bring to justice those who violate human rights or international humanitarian law. A Joint Monitoring Committee was set up. The Government of the Philippines however, since refuses to participate effectively in the enforcement mechanism put in place by this mutually binding agreement.

The Government has equally been unable to deliver on the other substantial points of The Hague Joint Declaration and on the socio-economic, political and constitutional reforms.

It is therefore that the Government under the previous administration had chosen to abandon the peace negotiations and to opt for a so-called military solution. In that perspective criminalization of NDFP member organizations and of its chief political consultant as “terrorists” was the logical consequence of a choice for all-out war and against peace. Any government that respects itself does not negotiate with terrorists but fights them as criminals. Branding the CPP, the NPA and Sison was a smokescreen to hide the fact that the Government had no intention and was unable to make any progress on the substantial points on the roadmap to peace. It opportunistically used the 9/11 events to transform the NDFP from a respected opponent in negotiation into a gang of the most heinous criminals.

The Government of the Philippines apparently hoped that this kind of pressure on the NDFP would move the organization (or part of it) to capitulate.

The inclusion in the lists had been preceded in December 2001 and January 2002 by the Philippine government’s requirement for the NDFP to sign a “definitive agreement” it had prepared and which implied the negation of all that had been previously agreed, in exchange for a possible “delisting.”

In January 2003, the Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Philippines, Blas OPLE, said: “Once there is a peace agreement, I will request to the EU, the United States and other countries to delist (the rebels) as terrorists. If they sign, they will no longer be terrorists”³. The NDFP obviously did not succumb to such blackmail.

The United States of America had objectives at different levels:

• “binding” its Filipino clients to the US by assisting them to realize their plans in the peace process

• Seek justification for US military presence in the Philippines, a necessary link in the chain to encircle China and a potential platform for military action in the whole of Asia.

• Neutralizing by intimidation the NDFP which is the main force in the Philippines opposed to US military presence and capable to raise the Filipino masses against such presence.

• More general: setting a precedent on extending the “war on terror” far beyond Al Qaida and its allies to liberation movements and impose upon the world a new international framework that undermines and annihilates the more progressive framework of international law created in the aftermath of the antifascist struggle during World War II.

The European Union supported the move also for different reasons.

The website of the Dutch foreign ministry is very clear in that perspective. Its shows beyond any doubt that purely diplomatic reasons are the underlying reasons for the listing: maintaining beneficial political and economic relations with the corrupt and repressive regime in the Philippines and pleasing its protector in Washington.

Immediately after mentioning the extensive trade relations and the fact that the Netherlands is one of the major investors in the Philippines with the presence of more than 150 companies, the Dutch Foreign Ministry states:

“The only burden for the Dutch-Philippine relations is comprised of the stay of the leadership of the Communist resistance in Utrecht. Peace talks between the Philippine government and the resistance leadership, which formerly were facilitated by the Netherlands, now take place in Norway. Only back-door talks are still held in the Netherlands. In this way, the Netherlands maintains a hands-off policy. The most prominent leader of the resistance, Jose Maria Sison, has been denied political asylum in the Netherlands. … The Philippines has welcomed the measures taken by the Netherlands, among others, upon an American request, to freeze the assets of Mr. Sison, the Philippine Communist Party (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army”.

The legal defense of Jose Maria Sison as part of a political counter offensive.

It was from the very beginning clear that the inclusion of Jose Maria Sison in the EU assets freezing list had nothing to do with the fight against terrorism.

Jose Maria Sison is not involved in terrorist activities. Officially the assets freezing lists are instruments to prevent the financing of terrorist activities. Not at any point of the proceedings the European Council argued that Jose Maria Sison was involved in any suspicious financial transaction. When the Court asked the Council if they had observed such transactions the Council was simply unable to answer the question while the point had not even been thought of. The only income of Jose Maria Sison was his monthly social allowance of 200 Euros and his expenses were limited to payment of the grocery store, his dentist, etc.

While it was obvious that the case was purely political in nature the very first point for the defense was to respond politically. On the other hand it was not sufficient to give a mere political answer. In order to convince the Court but especially to gather wide support from the public for the case, it was necessary to show that the European Council had violated various rules of international and European law by including Jose Maria Sison in such list. The political and legal aspects of the case went hand in hand which was essential to an effective defense.

In the political aspect of the defense a difficult tactical question arose: the CPP and the NPA had decided not to submit an application to the European Court against their inclusion in the list while they very rightly found that the legitimacy of the revolutionary struggle in the Philippines was not to be subject to the judgment of a Court established by an imperialist institution such as the European Union. The defense of Jose Maria Sison’s case had to take into consideration this decision. Sison’s defense could therefore not concentrate on the legitimacy of the revolutionary struggle in the Philippines and its total incompatibility with terrorism. Doing this would have submitted that legitimacy indirectly to the judgment of the Court. And on the other hand it was necessary to defend that legitimacy for the work in the public opinion and to some extent could not be avoided in the Court. Luckily the NDFP negotiating panel intervened voluntarily in the proceedings. The role of an intervener is to support the main applicant by submitting additional information to the Court on which the Court must however not pronounce itself. The NDFP informed the Court and the public opinion about the nature of the peoples struggle in the Philippines and its total opposition to terrorism.

Sison’s defense concentrated on the obvious violations of fundamental rights contained in various international human rights instruments.

First of all it was argued that the European Council misused its powers by listing Sison for obvious political and diplomatic reasons without any effect on the prevention of terrorist activity in which Joma Sison was anyhow not involved.

Secondly, the defense also argued that the Council did not even respect its own legal conditions as set by the regulation establishing the list mechanism.

The regulation required at least a prior investigation on a national level by a judicial authority into terrorist activity. There was no such investigation in this case. In the second stage of the proceedings the Council referred to three decisions in Sison’s asylum proceedings, pretending that these decisions had been unfavorable to Sison. In fact the European Council went as far as simply pretending that these decisions said exactly the opposite of what they really contained. When the Council understood that this argument had to be rejected by the Court while it was completely outrageous and easily recognizable as false by anyone who can read and write, false and trumped up charges for ordering murders in the Philippines were brought against Jose Maria Sison in Holland with the help of the Government of the Philippines. Sison’s defense was not only able to show that the so-called witnesses had been professional assets of the military in previous cases, that they had been interviewed by Dutch policeman in the Philippines but either in military camps or –I wonder why- in the US embassy in Manila. And finally, last but not least, that the same charges had already been dismissed with the following consideration by the Supreme Court of the Philippines which ordered the Regional Court of Makati to dismiss the cases because of “the obvious involvement of political considerations in the actuations of respondent Secretary of Justice and respondent prosecutors. …We cannot emphasize too strongly that prosecutors should not allow, and should avoid, giving the impression that their noble office is being used or prostituted, wittingly or unwittingly, for political ends, or other purposes alien to, or subversive of, the basic and fundamental objective of observing the interest of justice even-handedly … ”

In a desperate attempt to create an investigation for “terrorism” against Jose Maria Sison, the Dutch picked the file out of the dustbin of the Supreme Court and arrested Sison on murder charges. A Dutch Court released him after 15 days and the case was of course completely dropped by the time the terrorist listing case was pleaded in the European Court.

Thirdly, not even the most basic right to a fair trial was respected. The inclusion in the list was initially done without any notification of a statement of reasons and even without any notification at all. Sison found out about his inclusion in the list because his grocer complained about not being paid. When asked for the reasons of the decision, the Council answered first that the file was secret, then that there was no file and finally that the file had been taken back by the EU member state who submitted it. When asked which state this was the Council argued that that was also secret. A large part of the defense of Sison therefor concentrated on the violation of fair trial rights.

The defense of Jose Maria Sison was conducted in parallel in the European Court and in public opinion. This was absolutely necessary. The concerted international attack on Sison was conducted to criminalize him in the eyes of the international public opinion, and through him the struggle of the revolutionary movement in the Philippines. Delegitimizing the progressive movement and legitimizing the unlawful repression against the people’s movement taking the form not only of military action against the NPA but also of the re-emergence of death squads and extrajudicial killings were the result of this US-EU policy which made them accomplices of such crimes.

Therefor the public opinion in Europe had to be informed that by including Sison in the EU terror list, the EU supported state-terrorism in the Philippines, helped to derail the peace negotiations, acted as a puppet of the US, violating the most fundamental human rights so solemnly proclaimed by the European Human Rights Convention and the European Charter of fundamental rights.

The Defend Sison Campaign played an essential role in this. All documents of the proceedings were immediately published on the website so that every democrat in Europe had the possibility to consult them and make up his or her own mind on the case. The Defend Sison campaign opposed complete transparency to the secrecy of the decision making process that lead to criminalization at the EU level.

Numerous public events were organized where members of the international defense team gave information about the case to the public. A petition campaign was developed.

The Defend Sison Committee informed the press by way of public statements which resulted in an increasing number of press articles describing the injustice done to Prof. Sison.

Without this work towards the public opinion it would have been much more difficult to create the right climate for the Court to annul the listing of Sison a first time in 2007 and, while the European Council insisted and included Sison again in the list, a second and final time in 2009.

Some points of conclusion:

1. The Sison case shows how far the US and EU are willing to go in violating the rule of law, the most essential rights of defense, the obligation to transparency which they loudly claim, on the other hand, to cherish. Joma Sison was included in the blacklist based on a secret file and without any specification of the accusations. His rights of defense were thus only slightly inferior to the ones that were respected by the Spanish inquisition.

2. And all this with the goal to demonize opponents to imperialism and dissenters like Sison. And now even beyond, individuals such as Bradley Manning, Julian Assange or Edward Snowden who simply inform the public about the crimes committed by the US have also become targets of criminalization.

3. This far-going violation of fundamental rights calls for a vigorous and offensive response of the progressive movement. uman rights have been used It is important to claim fundamental rights back as the legacy of the progressive movement while there has been so much demagogical misuse of the term “human rights” promoting the idea that the “free west” is the champion of these rights while in reality it is the worst violator. Breaking through this smokescreen by exposing the violations of national and international law is a necessity.

4. Combining legal and political arguments into one comprehensive defense that is conducted transparently is another requirement to create the conditions to win cases and to stop the criminalization. In particular such arguments based on law and on politics are necessary to be able to arouse public awareness and support without which victory is totally impossible.

1 jan.fermon@progresslaw.net Progress Lawyers Network LN spokesperson, lead lawyer in the international defense team of Jose Maria Sison, Deputy Secretary General of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL)

2 mathieu.beys@progresslaw.net, member of the international defense team of Jose Maria Sison

3 “Reds must sign peace accord to get off terror list: Ople”, Agence France-Presse, February, 1, 2003 (http://www.inq7.net/brk/2003/feb/01/brkpol_12-1.htm)

Presentation at the International Conference for Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines

Quezon City, Philippines
20 July 2013

PANEL 4. Best Practices: International solidarity campaigns

By Fr. REX REYES
General Secretary
National Council of Churches in the Philippines

Churches have a significant role in the struggle for human rights in the Philippines. Aside from lending their prophetic voice to announce and denounce the human rights violations in the country, they also accompany human rights organizations and basic sectors in mobilizations and fact-finding missions. Churches also utilize their resources to help victims and their families by providing sanctuaries and even funds in their quest for justice and their efforts to rebuild their lives.

Still, one of the most important contributions of the churches in the human rights struggle is in tapping its international ecumenical friends and partners. This is the church’s historical role in international solidarity since the 1970’s. The influence and resources of these partners enable Philippine churches and the broader human rights community in the country to gain access to governments like the US and Canada and intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations and the European Union. Significant efforts in relation to this are encapsulated in the following:

• Hosting International Ecumenical Solidarity Visits. Tthe extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances intensified with the implementation of the then Arroyo government’s counter-insurgency program called Oplan Bantay Laya in 2002, reached an alarming rate by 2005. One person was killed or disappeared for political reasons every other day. Alarmed by the situation, the NCCP called to its international ecumenical partners. The World Council of Churches (WCC) and Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) responded by forming a Pastoral Ecumenical Delegation Visit to reach out to the victims and their families and to personally witness the sufferings of the Filipino people. The high level delegation from Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Norway, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and United States joined hands with prominent church leaders in the Philippines, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and visited Eastern Visayas, Hacienda Luisita, and Mindanao from July 14-21, 2005. It was one of the first international delegations on human rights in the country during the period. It encouraged other church institutions to speak out against the killings. Other church institutions also sent delegations like the United Methodist Church (UMC) Connectional Table, the UMC-California Nevada and California Pacific Conferences and United Church of Canada. The UMC California Pacific Conference delegation in February 2010 was one of the first international entities covered by the media that spoke against the illegal arrest and detention of the Morong 43.
• The release of “Let the Stones Cry Out: An Ecumenical Report on Human Rights in the Philippines and a Call to Action”. This report was submitted to government and inter-government bodies in North America and Europe and the United Nations Human Rights Council. The said report was later published along with the chronicles of its submission to the aforementioned institutions in the book “Let the Stones Cry Out: The Continuing Search for Justice”. The book was hailed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno as the “embodiment of everything the human rights revolution stands for”. The book not only records what the ecumenical response to the impunity but also can serve as a resource book for continuing human rights advocacy.
• Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines. The NCCP spearheaded the formation of a nine-member delegation of Protestant and Roman Catholic bishops and clergy, Christian and Muslim human rights defenders called the Ecumenical Voice for Peace and Human Rights in the Philippines. The Ecumenical Voice sought to let survivors or relatives of victims of the culture of impunity to testify before international audiences. This is one of the outstanding features of the campaign to Stop the Killings. Thus, for instances and on hindsight the testimonies of Dr. Chandu Claver, Dr. Edith Burgos, Mr. Jonathan Sta. Rosa, Pastor Berlin Guerrero, Mr. Raymond Manalo, Ms. Melissa Roxas and Hon. Ernan Baldomero, among others, were powerful and real stories.

The delegation submitted the abovementioned report in March 2007 to: Members of Parliament in Canada, Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Canada, the sub-committee on foreign relations in the US Senate, the Minister and Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission of Germany to the Office of the United Nations at Geneva (the delegation also met with the minister in Germany’s capacity as President of the European Union), Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In the US, a hearing on the extra judicial killings in the Philippines was held chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer where two members of the delegation spoke. I would like to mention at this point that the UMC California Nevada Conference was one of those who lobbied the office of Sen. Boxer to conduct the said hearing upon their return from their solidarity visit. The said hearing was the banner headline of the Philippine Daily Inquirer the next day.

These efforts we could say contributed to the decrease in the number of killings by 2008.

• Philippine UPR Watch. A delegation convened by the Ecumenical Voice, with the help of international ecumenical partners engaged in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The UPR was then a new mechanism under the UNHRC where member states’ fulfilment of its obligations to international rights treaties is assessed by their peers. The Philippines was among the first batch of countries reviewed. In January 2008, representatives of the Asia Working Group of NGOs at the United Nations (AWG) and the Philippine Working Group (PWG) within the Asia Pacific Forum of Church World Service (APF/CWS), along with human rights groups based in Hong Kong met with representatives of the NCCP and two of its partner organizations, CONTAK and Karapatan, to prepare for an organized international response to the UPR. Foremost among the responses that were planned was the lobbying during the UNHRC session in Geneva in March 2008 and during the actual UPR.

A seven member multi-sectoral delegation coming from the Philippines was sent. The multi-sectoral delegation was composed of church leaders, human rights defenders and victims/families of victims. There was also a two-person team that went to the US to speak at events in the US. This included Dr. Edita T. Burgos, whom you of course know very well and Mervin Toquero of the NCCP. The tour covered nine (9) different cities to raise awareness about the cases of politically motivated extrajudicial killings and disappearances as well as other forms of human rights abuses and repression.

The Geneva delegation reiterated that the Philippine government with its appalling human rights record does not deserve its seat in the UN Human Rights Council. Rep. Teddy Casiño, Mr. Jonathan Sta. Rosa and myself followed Atty. Edre Olalia of NUPL and Ms. Marie Hilao-Enriquez who were the advance team who did some prior lobbying in Geneva. There, we were joined by Donnie Mapanao of Migrante Switzerland. The delegation that went to Geneva for the UPR was not able to present oral interventions during the actual UPR session, but through other venues and actions was able to present an alternative report on the actual situation on the ground in contrast to the rosy human rights picture that the Philippine government painted. The continuing national and international campaign coupled with our lobbying among a number of the Permanent Missions paid off. Delegates from 17 countries took the Philippine government to task for its failure to address the problems of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, especially in the prosecution of perpetrators. They also scored the Philippine government for its failure to address equally important issues such as the protection of migrant workers, the trafficking of women and children, and corruption. Onthe 8^th Session of the HRC that following June, civil society organizations were allowed to give oral interventions.

These efforts in relation to the Universal Periodic Review were successful. We were able to do lobby work with various missions, some of whom raised critical questions to the Philippine National Report especially on the issue of extra-judicial killings. We held two well-attended side events, one was at the WCC Ecumenical Center and the other was at the United Nations.

We were also able to deliver oral interventions in relation to the human rights report of the Philippine Government and the report of Prof. Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. We even delivered a statement during the consideration of the UPR Report on the Netherlands regarding the violation of the human rights of Filipino exiles, asylum-seekers and refugees. We presented the objective realities prevailing in the country before the international community and it was very effective in countering the glossy human rights picture projected by the government before the world.

After those efforts, the cases of extra-judicial killings have gone down. However, to paraphrase Prof. Alston, the decrease in number while a cause to congratulate, is likewise a cause to condemn because it merely shows clearly who are behind the extrajudicial killings. The decrease was a result of the pressure to the Philippine government brought about by the widespread national and international condemnation. But it does not mean that the human rights violations stopped altogether.

In all these, the media in the Philippines was provided updates and copies of press releases and statements.

The UPR Watch was reconvened in 2011 during for the second UPR on the Philippines in 2012. This time, the human rights record of the government of Pres. Benigno Aquino was also assessed. A four-person delegation went to Geneva during the 19^th session of the UN Human Rights Council from 27th February – 23rd March 2012, in preparation for the actual UPR in May 2012. The delegation brought the compilation of reports of the different organizations under the Watch and conducted lobbying and other related activities to show to the international community the continuing human rights crisis in the country.

At about the same time, a delegation was sent to the US and then to Canada. The delegation in the US was composed of Angelina Bisuña Ipong or Angie, of the Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainee Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (Association of Ex-Detainees Against Detention and Arrest), Bishop Reuel Norman Marigza, General Secretary of the UCCP and Bishop Felixberto Calang of the IFI and Initiatives for Peace in Mindanao. For Canada, Ms. Ipong and Bp. Marigza were joined by Dr. Merry Mia Clamor of Health Alliance for Democracy and one of the Morong 43. The US and Canada tour was a success, and they were able to speak cumulatively to around 2,000 people and with good coverage. They were also able to lobby successfully with members of the US Congress and Canadian Parliament. In Canada the tour jumpstarted networking and organizing and helped reinvigorate the work for human rights issues in the Philippines. The tour organizers committed to sustain the momentum by inviting people to be part of the organizations under the Stop the Killings network.

Another Philippine UPR Watch delegation went to Geneva in May 2012 for the actual UPR. The 12 member delegation was joined by members of the International Committee on the Campaign for Human Rights in the Philippines, Bayan-USA, and Migrante-Switzerland.

The efforts of the UPR Watch were again successful. They were able to able to talk to 47 missions in Geneva and 10 missions (embassies) in Manila. Again, many countries put the Philippine government to task for its failure to curb if not to stop the human rights violations in particular the extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Around 69 countries quizzed the Philippine government on its human rights record during the UPR session. One after the other, at least 22 countries expressed concerns on the continuing spate of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and torture in particular, and impunity in general. After the UPR, the delegation was also able to meet with representatives of the Sub-committee on Human Rights of the European Parliament (DROI) in Brussels, Belgium. The EU Parliament later released their resolution on impunity in the Philippines.

The Philippines state’s UPR came up for adoption on the 21^st session of the Human Rights Council which fell on September 20, 2012. The Philippine UPR Watch again sent a delegation to the said session and delivered oral interventions in the plenary hall during the adoption of the Philippine UPR working group report. Karapatan chairperson Marie Hilao Enriquez, head of delegation, and Dr. Rommel Linatoc of the (NCCP), delivered oral interventions. The other members of the Philippine UPR Watch were Ms. Melona Daclan of Defend Job Philippines, Rev. Michael Yoshii, a leader in the Isaiah Circle of the UN and International Affairs ministry of the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church, and Ms. Maribel Mapanao of the International Coordinating Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICCHRP) in Europe.

In retrospect, what we did is to bring the voices of the suffering but struggling people to the world. Without the accompaniment and solidarity of our international partners, we could not have done this. However, despite these efforts, human rights violations continue as Oplan Bayanihan, the government’s new counter-insurgency program, is still being relentlessly implemented. Justice remains elusive and impunity reigns. The Philippine government made commitments during the UPR. Thus, the task now, with the international community, is to keep watch and ensure that the commitments made by the government are followed to the letter, especially on the ground and to tirelessly call for the scrapping of Oplan Bayanihan and the resumption of the formal peace talks to address the roots of the armed conflict. There is reason to believe that there will be more repression in the coming months or years. This solidarity must be maintained as it has been rightfully maintained that “human rights violations here is human rights violations everywhere”. We must also point out at this point, that our international advocacy is not focused on civil and political rights alone. We are also very active in international initiatives in relation to migrants and indigenous peoples’ rights as well as in issues related to food and trade.

The Ecumenical Voice is now a formal alliance of the organizations involved in that above-described international lobbying. We are ready to share our experiences with other faith bodies and people’s organizations in the name of solidarity.

Presentation at the International Conference for Human Rights and Peace in the Philippines

Quezon City, Philippines
20 July 2013

PANEL 3. Struggle for just and lasting peace

By JOSE ENRIQUE AFRICA
Executive Director, IBON Foundation

Magandang umaga.

It is a privilege to speak today before all of you, among the closest friends from around the world of the Filipino people. Your solidarity and support is so important and appreciated.

And it is an honor to have been asked to speak about something that is so close to the heart of every Filipino activist, of whatever generation, and that drives and consumes us – the struggle for a just and lasting peace, and for the humane society that is the only thing that can bring that about. This struggle is everywhere.

Poverty and inequality

The Philippines is a country of some 100 million people. We are the 2^nd largest country in Southeast Asia and 12^th largest in the world.

We have vast natural resources: over 10 million hectares of agricultural land; billions of tons of mineral resources that rank us among the most mineral-rich in the world (ranked 3^rd in gold reserves, 4^th in copper, 5^th in nickel and 6^th in chromite by mineral intensity); extensive energy resources (including natural gas, geothermal sources, hydropower, wind, wave, solar energy, biomass and even some oil); and rich biodiversity where we rank 25^th worldwide in the number of plant and animal species. Our Tubbataha reefs which the US 7^th fleet vessel USS Guardian intruded in and destroyed is part of the Coral Triangle which is recognized as the global center of marine biodiversity with some 40% of the world’s coral reef fishes and 80% of its corals.

These are more than enough resources for a life of dignity for all within a just and peaceful society. But despite this – or indeed because of our riches and potential – we are poor, backward and underdeveloped. This is our national condition.

The president gives his state of the nation address (SONA) before the country’s elite on Monday. He will say many things but not the true state of the nation, nor of the people. For some months now much has been said about the economy – the fastest economic growth among the major countries of East and Southeast Asia, consecutive record highs in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) index which is among the best performing in the world, record gross international reserves, investment grade ratings from two major international credit ratings agencies, and going up world competitiveness rankings. True perhaps, but not the truth.

The truth is this. Job creation has been falling and we now have the most number of unemployed and underemployed Filipinos in the country’s history: 11.9 million in April 2013 consisting of 4.6 million unemployed and 7.3 million underemployed. Our jobless includes the 822,000 farmers, fisherfolk and workers and the 21,000 professionals who lost their jobs in the year leading up to April 2013.

This is why some 12 million Filipinos have been forced abroad to find work with 4,924 Filipinos leaving the country each day last year. We are all familiar with the horrible abuses migrants suffer on top of the separation from their families. It is worst for those with irregular or undocumented status and they have been growing in record numbers in the last years.

This is the breadth of poverty in the Philippines: we estimate some 68 million poor Filipinos which is the worst scale of poverty in the country’s history. The government officially counts only some 27 million poor which is already a huge number. But to do this they use an absurd poverty threshold of just Php52 per person per day. So the government expects that for just US$1.20 a day – or the price of a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola here – a Filipino will be able to provide for all of his or her food, shelter, clothing, medical, education, utilities and other needs.

This is the depth of poverty in the country: each member of the country’s poorest 1.9 million families, or the poorest decile, try to live off just Php22 per day. For the next poorest 1.9 million, or the second decile, they have Php35 per day. Then it is Php45, Php55 and Php67 for the succeeding deciles.

This is the severity of inequality: the income of the top 1% of families (185,000 families) is equivalent to that of the poorest 30% or 5.5 million families. But the survey that gives these figures does not capture the super-rich. The net worth of the richest 40 Filipinos equals the combined income in a year of the poorest 70 million Filipinos.

Amid all this – others would say because of all this – corporate profits and the wealth of the few continue to rise. The combined profit of Philippine stock exchange-listed firms rose 17% last year to Php501 billion. The combined profit of the country’s Top 1000 corporations – nearly half of whom, by revenue, are foreign transnational corporations – grew 8% in 2011 to Php868 billion. The combined net worth of just the 40 richest Filipinos grew 38% to US$47 billion in 2012; this is equivalent to over one-fifth of the economy (measured by GDP for the year).

Oppression and exploitation

There is extreme poverty and inequality in the Philippines. More precisely, there is severe oppression and exploitation. The social and economic rights of the broadest number have been methodically subordinated to narrow economic interests for many decades and have affected generations of Filipinos.

The economic policies in place systematically create the conditions for increasing the profits and wealth of a few. These are not accidental outcomes – much less due merely to corruption or rent-seeking – but are rather the inevitable result of long-standing and accumulating economic policies aimed at creating favourable conditions for foreign capitalists and domestic big business interests to profit and to flourish.

The Filipino people suffered hundreds of years of Spanish then American colonial rule. After sham independence in the 1940s came the decades under the American-designed neocolonial system. US imperialism has made sure that their economic and political domination of our economy, politics, military and culture remain intact.

In the last three decades the cutting edge of imperialist plunder in the Philippines has been the free market policies of neoliberal globalization. The first and biggest wave were trade and investment liberalization, privatization and deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s. The 2000s continued these policies but with increasing attention to the nuts-and-bolts of capitalism – corporate governance, financial codes and standards, and the like. Today we also have social protection and targeted poverty reduction including a multibillion peso conditional cash transfer program to create political legitimacy and fabricate popular support for continued neoliberalism.

So-called globalization was promoted especially in the post-Cold War era and upon the supposed discrediting of Socialist and Communist alternatives as the way to development. Yet after three decades the Philippines still has a rural economy where seven out of 10 peasants are landless and a third of landowners own or control more than 80% of agricultural land, mandated minimum wages are not even half needed for decent living, six out of ten workers don’t have written contracts, 30 workers a day suffer trade union-related rights violations, over 1,500 urban poor families are displaced monthly by commercial projects, three-fourths of households are food insecure, three million families or 15 million people do not have access to clean water, infant and maternal mortality are ten times worse for the poorest than the richest, government spending on debt payments is thrice what it spends on education and fifteen times on health, and there are two million child laborers.

Imperialism grossly and disproportionately benefits from Filipino labor and natural resources. We are plundered for our labor, agricultural and fisheries resources and minerals, exploited through overpricing of oil, power and water, and are denied opportunities even in our own domestic markets. Half of approved investment in the country in the last decade is foreign rather than Filipino; this is aside from the capital of the local comprador enterprises who are their domestic collaborators. Our economy has paid out over US$150 billion in debt servicing and over US$25 billion in profit remittances since 1980. We have exported over US$30 billon worth of mineral exports since the 1970s while our local industry remains stunted and our mining communities are among the most ecologically destroyed and impoverished in the country.

The country’s elites have reproduced this system through their control over the formal mechanisms of traditional political power including especially the brutal armed forces of the reactionary State – the police, military and paramilitaries. This is the Philippine face of neoliberal Western electoral democracy.

Struggles

All this is intolerable and the Filipino people have always risen up against their oppressors. Our current struggle draws its lineage from the Katipunan-led uprising against Spanish colonial rule in 1896 – the first successful anti-colonial revolution in Asia that set up, briefly, the First Philippine Republic in 1897. We have fought US imperialism since the turn of the century, battled Japanese military occupation during the Second World War, fought neocolonial rule by landlords and compradors, struggled against the Marcos dictatorship, and are waging struggles to this day.

We tackle every issue that pertains to the rights and welfare of the Filipino masses: agrarian reform, jobs, wages, mining plunder, health privatization, public education, housing, the oil cartel, ancestral land, water privatization, power privatization, violence against women, free trade agreements, the World Trade Organization, militarization, human rights and many many others. The Filipino masses are fighting for their rights and welfare.

We know that the market and constantly giving priority to private profits will never eliminate poverty and reduce inequality. We seek national development and to uphold the people’s welfare through radical redistribution of wealth and assets, through modernizing our economy via agrarian reform, rural development and national industrialization, and through sustained public provision of education, health and housing. We know these require a democratic and pro-people government so we work to build this as well.

We fight in every possible realm using every possible combination.

We work on the basis of an understanding of the structural problems of the country and the crisis of capitalism. We give primacy to working class politics as the building blocks for wider social change which means a great emphasis on ideological work and organizing peasants, workers, national minorities and other oppressed groups into people’s organizations and mass movements towards claiming political power for the people.

We also engage in the legal and parliamentary realms – legitimate arenas for gains victories, big and small. While we are fully conscious that any even these will ultimately depend on the political power we have built outside in the mass movement.

Our struggles have had successes and will reach even more and greater heights in the decades to come. Workers’ trade unions of the KMU have eked out higher wages and benefits at the firm level while fighting for a nationwide across-the-board wage hike; peasants of KMP have seized or won land struggles across the country including a historic, if yet partial and incomplete, victory in symbolic Hacienda Luisita; national minorities in Mindanao have resisted the incursion of big mining firms into their communities and ancestral lands; multi-sectoral struggles have opposed oil monopolies; and much more.

The situation especially in our vast backward countryside is so intolerable that even armed revolutionary movements have emerged and flourished. The currently active forces with parallel governance structures in large portions of the country’s territory include the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front of the Philippines (CPP-NPA-NDFP) that operates in 70 of 79 provinces, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front-Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (MILF-BIAF) which is active in 14 provinces in the southern Philippines though currently in peace talks with the Aquino government. Such radical alternatives are objectively the strongest counterpoint to neocolonialism and capitalism in the country.

We are peasants, fisherfolk, workers, migrants, national minorities, women, youth, students, health workers, teachers, scientists, cultural workers, government employees, church workers, human rights workers, environmentalists, urban poor, drivers, entrepreneurs, lawyers and other professionals. And we are organized and collective and democratic in our struggles.

Repression

And because we are strong and growing stronger we are repressed violently and systematically.

The current Aquino administration professes to respect human rights, has supposed progressives and civil society leaders in government, and is internationally praised for its ‘good governance’. Yet it has seen 142 extrajudicial killings (EJKs), 12 enforced disappearances, and 148 additional political prisoners. There are thousands of victims in just the last decade since 2001 – 1,345 EJKs, 222 enforced disappearances and 430 political prisoners – with zero accountability.

These human rights violations of EJKs, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention and others continue. And because they are State-sponsored they continue with impunity.

Defiance

But because we are unafraid, we are defiant. We are hundreds of thousands of activists, organizers, campaigners. We are millions of people believing in, mobilizing and taking action for a truly free and democratic Philippines.

This is the arc of our struggle: resistance, defiant struggle, and victory for the people!

Maraming salamat at magandang umaga sa ating lahat.