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Third Congress Documents

 

Defending People’s Rights Against Foreign Aggression

And State Terrorism

 

Romeo T. Capulong

President, Public Interest Law Center (PILC)

Keynote Address to the Third IAPL Congress

Davao City, Philippines

14 October 2006

 

Esteemed Colleagues, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Today, as we hold the third Congress of the International Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL) with the theme, “The Role of Lawyers in Defending the Democratic Rights of the People,” we are troubled by the fact that we live in a very dangerous world. I say this not only because as a Filipino I experience in my country being ruled by a president who cheats, lies and steals to stay in the presidency without any constitutional mandate.  As lawyers defending the oppressed and exploited poor we experience in our country being subjected to serious threats of assassination under a government that employs total war, state terrorism and political persecution with the help of a foreign power to perpetuate an unjust system. I say this also because of the increasing tensions and blatant violations of international law throughout the world arising from U.S.-led wars of aggression and interventionism in many countries even as peoples continue to suffer the trade and financial impositions of major capitalist countries led by the United States.

 

Under the era of globalization particularly in 2004, transnational corporations became richer with total profits amounting to $18 trillion. This wealth has been made possible, however, by forcing 800 million people in the Third World to go hungry today. Globalization, through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other onerous regional bilateral trade and investment agreements, widened the income gap between rich and poor countries: In 1980, the median income of the richest 10 percent of countries was 77 times more than the poorest 10 percent; by 1999, it was 122 times greater.

 

Arms manufacturers and traders are also making it big under globalization, with global arms trade and military expenditures averaging $950 billion since the onset of the new millennium. In 2005, the United States accounted for $421 billion (2005) or half of the world’s total arms trade and military expenditures. Promoting war is lucrative but promoting peace and security is risky: The United Nations can only make do with $10 billion every year.

 

Globalization, which is supposed to distribute wealth equally among nations and thus make the world a bit peaceful, is not only increasing the economic hegemony of rich countries led by the United States but is also engendering wars and armed conflicts. Countries, particularly the developing world, face not only the worst economic and financial crisis and the further destitution of their own people but also bear the additional burden of having to contend with wars and foreign intervention.

 

This brings me to my next point. The bleak economic and social conditions confronting peoples in both developed and poor countries are the offspring of the greed of capitalist countries led by the United States to address the global crisis of capitalism through neo-liberalism allowing them to strengthen their hegemony in international trade and other aspects of the world economy. In particular, the United States has sought to globalize free trade to make sure it continues to dominate access to resources and cheap labor in its quest for what its ideologues and neo-conservative think tanks call Pax Americana or a truly global American Empire. Part of this global agenda is to redraw the map of the Middle East and other regions so as to ensure its control of the world’s oil resources and draw these countries to the monopoly capitalist-dominated world free trade.

 

As the only superpower today, the U.S. world hegemony agenda needed new ideological constructs – call it propaganda slogans – in order to justify the launching of wars of aggression and establish neo-colonies in the Middle East and elsewhere. “Global terrorism,” “axis of evil,” “rogue regimes” and “weapons of mass destruction” have thus become the scapegoats in the U.S.’ bombing, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, in reestablishing its military foothold in the Philippines and in bullying Iran, Cuba, North Korea and other small and independent countries. The declared objectives of the Bush administration’s “war without borders” have been proven to be lies and its real geo-economic and geo-political motives in unleashing wars of aggression in these countries have already been unmasked, yet the U.S. continues to foment tensions everywhere (as in Iran and the Korean peninsula) and increases its armed presence in many regions to encircle its potential power competitors, such as China and Russia.

 

But this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Worldwide condemnation continues against the magnitude of human toll and the social and economic catastrophes that such wars of aggression, invasion and occupation have exacted over the past decade when the U.S. began its pre-emptive military agenda. We have mourned and denounced tens of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians killed and massacred as a result of what the U.S. aggressors call “collateral damage”; we deplored the whole-scale destruction of economies, social welfare programs and civilian infrastructures; we watched in horror as the world’s early civilizations vanished under the ruins as a result of air strikes; we also protested, and some of us lawyers intervened, against the abduction and summary execution of “terrorist suspects” and in the inhumane detention and torture of Muslim militants in secret prison camps. We are also disgusted by the way U.S., coalition occupation and allied forces treat civilians with indignities and violate their rights in the ongoing civil wars in Iraq, Afghanistan as well as in Palestine, Lebanon and elsewhere.

 

But there is another war that has become more insidious and sinister as it spreads horror and fascism not only in areas where wars of aggression have taken place but also in many other countries across the world including the United States, Europe, Asia and elsewhere. This is a war that promises to dump aside the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law and other human rights instruments or even the Rome Treaty of 2002 that established the International Criminal Court. This is a war that envisages to rewrite the constitutions of many countries and establish new “laws” that assault the most basic human rights such as the right to life, liberty and happiness; freedom of expression and the right to assembly and to organize, and travel; and, most fundamental of all, the freedom from discrimination or persecution on account of nationality, race, religion, political creed and the right to pursue political beliefs through peaceful means or revolutionary struggle.

 

This war - the globalization of “counter-terrorism” spearheaded by the United States - has led to the globalization of the U.S. state power and its own national security doctrines where those who oppose its neo-liberal policies and “democratic values and ideas” are labeled as “enemies,” “rogue regimes” and “terrorists.” The globalization of “counter-terrorism” has removed the distinction between those who, having seen their lands transgressed and their resources robbed and plundered by foreign powers have resorted to extremist actions, on the one hand, and those who oppose imperialist globalization and its adverse effects on people’s lives and economies through peaceful advocacy, on the other. Those who now pursue armed revolution in their struggle against neo-colonization, and for land and jobs as in the Philippines, Colombia, Nepal and elsewhere have been de-politicized and became targets of “counter-terrorism.”

 

Indeed, the so-called “war against terrorism” has been used by the United States and its major “coalition forces” to attack and transgress the independence, national boundary and territorial integrity of many countries including the Philippines based on the oft-repeated but now widely-discredited Bush policy that “he who is not with us, is against us.” Many new bases or access agreements have been forged controversially with many countries throughout the world allowing U.S. troops, war facilities and spies to enter their territory paying no respect to their constitutions and the rights and culture of their citizens. The United States has been denounced in the UN Human Rights Council and other international institutions as well as human rights organizations for using the “war against terrorism” to prop up despotic governments while encouraging many others to establish a reign of terror among their own populations in violation of international law and human rights instruments.

Specifically, the globalization of “counter-terrorism” has led many governments to enact new security laws that violate basic rights and freedoms. “Counter-terrorism” has also been used to justify the repression of political dissenters and those struggling for freedom, social and economic reform or those resisting the adverse effects of economic globalization policies. It has been used as well to support arbitrary and punitive measures against immigrants, asylum seekers, migrant workers, refugees and other foreign nationals. 

Global “counter-terrorism” has thus given more teeth and dangerous powers to state terrorism that has had strong roots in many countries under the guise of “national security,” ensuring “peace and order” or simply eliminating “enemies of the state.”

At this juncture allow me to use the Philippines as a case to emphasize this point.

 

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whom an overwhelming majority of Filipinos refuse to recognize as a constitutional president, was the first head of state in Southeast Asia to support Mr. Bush’s “operation enduring freedom” against Afghanistan in October 2001, declaring the Philippines as the “second front of the war against terror.” That declaration set the stage for increased U.S. military aid as well as mutual agreements to increase the presence of U.S. troops and logistics in the Philippines under the guise of hunting down “global terrorist” cells and training Philippine forces in “counter-terrorism.” The first point about U.S. military aid and operations is true, of course; the second point is a monumental fraud. (In the first place, the Armed Forces of the Philippines had boasted early 2001 that the local “terrorist” group, Abu Sayyaf which is actually a kidnap-for-ransom band, had been “neutralized.”)

 

In many respects, this military cooperation between Arroyo and Bush proved to be the real “weapon of mass destruction” as far as the Filipino people are concerned. First, Bush’s political and military support for Arroyo has been used for her to stay in power, despite massive electoral fraud in 2004 and two impeachment complaints filed against her, the first in 2005 and the second this year. Let me just add that in my country – which had been a colony of Spain and then of the United States for more than four centuries –U.S. strategic support makes or unmakes heads of state.

 

Second, the “war on terrorism” has been used to legitimize the legislation of a draconian anti-terrorism bill patterned after the USA Patriot Act and whose sinister aim is to silence the people’s resistance against the most corrupt and most illegitimate government. Aside from this, it will set the restoration of authoritarian rule similar to the much-hated Marcos dictatorship.

 

And third, the “war on terrorism” has been used or integrated into the “anti-insurgency” program that aims to crush the Marxist-led armed revolutionary struggle targeting in particular its alleged “front organizations” including party-list groups, sectoral and multisectoral organizations, their unarmed leaders and mass members. In the name of “counter-terrorism,” these alleged front organizations have been subjected since 2001 to vilification and criminalization, tagging them and their leaders and organizers as “terrorist” and thus, forcing them to bear the brunt of widespread assassinations, abductions and enforced disappearances. These illegal operations have resulted in the killing of about 756 activists, lawyers, peasant and trade union leaders as well as electoral volunteers and the abduction and enforced disappearance of 184 others. Around 360 other activists survived assassinations by death squads. The latest victim of summary execution is a leading peace advocate, church leader and human rights defender who was much loved by farm workers: former IFI Supreme Bishop Alberto Ramento.

 

More chilling, however, is the way by which these human rights violations are being blamed on the Left allegedly as part of their so-called “internal purge” even as no serious investigation has been conducted by state authorities let alone known or identified perpetrators been brought to justice. With this political persecution conducted by the Arroyo government itself through “Oplan Bantay Laya” (Operation Plan Freedom Watch) which is patterned after Oplan Phoenix during the Vietnam War in the 1960s continuing and with government’s investigative and judicial bodies covering up the responsibility of Arroyo’s security forces, families of the victims together with human rights organizations last September have filed human rights complaints against Arroyo and her generals before the UNHRC in Geneva.  May I announce that on October 30 the relatives of the victims of political killings will indict Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and George Bush together with their cohorts and co-conspirators before the Permanent People’s Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands for violation of human rights and international law, economic plunder and violation of the Filipino people’s right to national self-determination.

 

The gross and systematic human rights violations in the Philippines have drawn the serious concern and condemnation of the United Nations Human Rights Council, several international human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Asian Human Rights Council; the World Council of Churches and numerous other church institutions; some European governments including the European Council; as well as international groups of jurists and lawyers, including the Dutch Lawyers for Lawyers’ Foundation and the National Lawyers’ Guild.  I wish to thank the members of the IAPL for their strong condemnation of the murder of Bishop Alberto Ramento.  I am sure this Congress will issue a strong statement at the end of our deliberations condemning the unabated political killings and the massive cover-up of such killings by the Arroyo government.

 

What enraged these institutions even more is the impunity by which these crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by including Church servants, human rights defenders and human rights lawyers among the victims. It is incomprehensible and outrageous that even human rights volunteers and lawyers have been killed or threatened with assassination. To date, there have been 17 lawyers and 10 judges killed since 2001 for reasons related to their profession.

 

It is in this context that brings me to my concluding point. In the law profession, I’ve found that there is nothing more challenging and fulfilling than when you devote your time and energy to the defense of human rights and to people striving to change their lot for the better. In the 1960s-1980s when the U.S.-conjured Cold War shocked the world with wars of aggression in Indochina, when U.S.-backed military dictatorships became the norm, as national liberation movements struggled against imperialism and for independence and as the anti-war and anti-nuke movements grew by leaps and bounds, lawyers came to the rescue of activists and rebels to defend them against persecution, illegal arrest and torture and other human rights violations. It was during this time when human rights counseling as we know it today and human rights organizations were born. Some of these lawyers became themselves activists or were martyred while defending their clients or went on to found human rights litigation centers and clinics not only outside the courtroom but also in universities, in districts where there are large immigrant populations or victims of discrimination and wherever there are struggles among farmers, trade union workers, women, indigenous peoples and students, environmentalists, and so on.

 

Today, human rights lawyering has become more complex, the demand for legal intervention more urgent and the length and breadth for such assistance more international. The internationalization of U.S. state terrorism has also led to the violation of national boundaries and sovereignty of many countries, to violations of human rights becoming trans-national (as when a “terrorist suspect” is abducted in one country and detained in another) and political persecutions taking place in one country after another. When international laws and human rights instruments are being obliterated by so-called “national security doctrines” that dictate the definition of new laws at the expense of universal basic rights, freedoms and liberties, these cry out for resistance and intervention by concerned lawyers all over the world. When political dissidence or the mere advocacy of fundamental social and economic reform becomes the target of punitive operations by state governments and victims are denied due process of law, then this really calls for closing ranks among human rights defenders.

 

I realize however that coming to the succor of human rights victims – for that matter, all victims of social injustice – is not enough especially when, just like in my own country, the prosecutory and justice system is tilted in favor of protecting the powerful perpetrators and clearing state terrorism of its accountability. Clearly, no matter how lofty and noble the intentions are the defense of human rights and international humanitarian law is likely of no match anymore to the coercive power wielded by a superpower that shows no respect to international convention and is protected by self-declared immunity guarantees often forged conspiratorially with weak client governments over which it exercises so much influence. It is when this reality begins to unfold that you begin to understand more profoundly the legitimacy of transformative struggles waged by the human rights victims themselves all over the world, for that matter, all peoples struggling against social injustice, capitalist globalization and wars of aggression.

 

Definitely, however, considering the new and more powerful dangers that confront us as lawyers, human rights lawyering remains important and urgent especially in giving immediate legal support to victims and their families and in shielding them from further harm staged by state terrorists. But the service that human rights lawyers offer becomes more crucial, far-reaching and constructive when it is rendered with compassion and in support of the principles and struggles being waged by the victims themselves, when legal service is made available so that more and more people can continue to fight in making this world a better place to live in. After all, the true function of law from the standpoint of the powerless poor is not to restrict freedom, it is to enhance freedom and equality; the vocation of lawyers is not just to defend the less privileged and powerless but to oppose unjust and oppressive laws wherever they may be and to fulfill the aspirations of the people that are supposed to enjoy them. Law exudes its beauty when it dynamically transforms a society and uses its power to protect people from further aggression, oppression and enslavement.

 

In countries where there is oppression and exploitation, the powers-that-be make the law and control the justice and security instruments in furtherance of an unjust and repressive system. It is when the oppressed people rise as one to transform an unjust system into a just society where they are sovereign and lead their own government, that law becomes just and liberationist because it will be so constructed to counter all forms of foreign aggression and class exploitation thereafter, to make government more democratic yet accountable and the people empowered in fulfilling their dream of a free and prosperous society. #

 

References:

 

1.                 "Philippines: Political Killings, Human Rights and the Peace Process," Amnesty International report, August 2006.

 

2.                 KARAPATAN report to the UN Human Rights Council, Sept. 2006; Geneva.

 

3.                 "Philippines: Toward Ensuring Justice and Ending Political Killings," Memorandum of AI Secretary General Irene Khan to President Gloria M. Arroyo, London, Sept. 14, 2006.

 

4.                 "Philippines: Climate of Fear Impedes Probe into Killings," Human Rights Watch (Washington, DC), Sept. 28, 2006.

 

5.                 "Human Rights, Counter-Terrorism and Security," Michael Humphrey, School of Sociology, University of South Wales; posted by Australia Human Rights Centre.

 

6.                 A report of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

 

7.                 “Unpublished manuscripts, Vol. 1 No. 1, October 2003 and Vol. 1 No. 2, May 2004,” Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS), Philippines.

 

8.                 “From Facts to Action,” Report on the Attacks against Filipino Lawyers and Judges, Dutch Lawyers for Lawyers Foundation, July 24, 2006.

 

9.                 ”Stop the Killings in the Philippines,” IBON Foundation, 2006.

 

10.            “Philippines:  Unmasking the War on Terror,” Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies (CAIS), Philippines, 2002.

 

IAPL 2001