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Progressives are persecuted

“Mr. Speaker, in the last one-and-a-half months, 13 of our leaders and supporters have been assassinated in Central and Northern Luzon while five were abducted and remain missing. This means that every week for the past six weeks, three Bayan Muna leaders or supporters have either been killed or abducted in those areas. At the rate things are going, our party will have been wiped out by the next elections.”

These are among the words raised by Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casiño in his privilege speech at the House of Representatives on March 14, 2005.

Rep. Casiño made the observations after the assassinations of Bayan Muna Ilocos Regional Coordinator Romy Sanchez on March 9 in Baguio City and Aglipayan priest William Tadena, after saying mass, in La Paz, Tarlac on March 13. Sanchez is the first high-ranking official of the Bayan Muna killed since 2001.

After Rep. Casiño delivered his speech at around 6 pm on March 14, Human rights lawyer and Bayan Muna member Atty. Boy Dacut was shot in Tacloban City after buying milk for his child. Two unidentified men in a motorcycle shot him. Dacut died at the Bethany Hospital where he was rushed after the incident. Sanchez died on the very same spot where he was shot, even if responding policemen arrived five minutes after the shooting.

Earlier on March 7, an attempt was made against the life of the United Nations ad-litem judge Romeo Capulong, a known human rights lawyer, in his home in Nueva Ecija.

With these incidents at hand, there is basis for Rep. Casiño to be disturbed.

First, those killed are members of Bayan Muna, and other progressive party lists, who took the cudgel of the peoples’ issues long un-addressed by the government that supposedly work for the resolution of these issues.

Second, the rate of killing shows that the precious right to life, which differentiates humans from animals, is no longer respected and protected. The right to life is classified by the Constitution as fundamental, yet it is still violated. Anybody can be killed anywhere at any time of the day, while the perpetrators walk scot-free. Worse, abduction is back as a practice. Five were already abducted and are still missing for the past one-and-one-half months.

Third, assassinations were done in areas where there are strong community organizations and strong people’s movements to address their issues, like in Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, and the Southern Tagalog region. There is a trend that these acts are committed to sow fear to the members of these community organizations to silence them and prevent them from pursuing their legitimate issues.

Fourth, most of the perpetrators of these assassinations have not been apprehended. Perpetrators walk freely, since witnesses do not have enough courage to come out in the open.

In weaving all these developments, the advocate observes that there is a systematic move to attack these progressive organizations. They want to establish an environment of fear by trying to silence these organizations. Their first step is to attack the leaders – totally silence them if necessary – which could result to terrorizing progressive groups and that they would eventually weaken, including their call that their legitimate issues be addressed. But as the song goes: “You can kill a man, but not a song that goes the whole world round.” The song refers to the issue that will always arise if it remains to be unaddressed.

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The advocate also observes that the attack is done not only against organized progressive organizations. Even media practitioners – whether affiliated with any media professional organization – are attacked. In fact, there were 13 media practitioners killed last year. These media practitioners were exercising their freedom of the press and freedom of expression professionally. Yet the price they had to pay for their unselfish dedication to provide information and their act for the realization of free press is their lives.

Instead of institutionalizing a system for the deliver of justice to those killed, the present administration is pushing for the anti-terrorism bill which, if approved, would disregard the fundamental rights of people to petition the government for the redress of their grievances, freedom to assemble, to organization, to expression, and of the press.

This terror bill is not yet approved. But officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines propose that the exercise of free press, such as interviewing the government’s branded terrorists, should be penalized. This Anti-Terror Bill if adopted is martial rule although this practice of free press suppression is actually happening in reality. Pres. Arroyo’s scolding of a TV reporter for interviewing Ex-Senator Honasan during the Oakwood mutiny is an indication of a martial rule. It should be pointed out however that the above AFP proposal is contradictory to our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, especially freedom of the press and of expression.

As an expression of opposition to the government-proposed anti-terror bill, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) is conducting a signature campaign starting Saturday, March 19, 2005. We encourage you to join us and register your opposition to the anti-terror bill. To sign the petition, please visit www.nujp.org/atbpetition.htm. Or you can call the NUJP-Baguio-Benguet c/o 442-4175 for the petition. You can sign as an individual or better as an organization if you have. For inquiry about this, email nujp-bb@yahoo.com or text 09202442202. #

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