Beyond Human Rights

I

As Leftists, how should we approach the struggle for human rights? Currently we live in a society where killings have become the norm. Anybody can just kill, as long as he is in a possession of a marker and a cardboard. Likewise, anybody can just be killed.

Sectors of the Philippine Left have so far led the staunchest opposition to the killings. As early as July, the coalition In Defense of Human Rights and Dignity Movement or iDEFEND was formed. iDEFEND describes itself as "a coalition of non-government organizations, people’s organizations, individual HRDs, human rights lawyers, religious sector and members of the academe." 

Leading Filipino intellectual and iDEFEND leader Walden Bello has provided the clearest theoretical guide on how to struggle for human rights in his article "An Administration in Search of an Opposition," which was originally published in the Rappler.

This piece is meant to comment on Bello's "An Administration in Search" essay, and proposes a different view on how the Radical Left can effectively struggle for human rights under Duterte's killing regime.

II

According to Bello, human rights should be defended because these are the foundation for all other sorts of rights. Without recognition of such "basic" rights as the right to life, freedom, and due process, the attainment of other rights such as the right to be free from poverty and to a life with dignity cannot follow.

Accordingly, Bello said an Opposition movement to Rodrigo Duterte should come from the position of defending human rights. In his condluding words, "a strong opposition based on the defense of universal human rights is the best way to ensure the future of Philippine democracy."

There are a number of potential problems with this formulation, especially from the standpoint of an openly radical Socialist and anti-Capitalist politics. But then, this is perhaps precisely the first point of divergence.

In his writings, Walden Bello often champions progressive values in front of a broad political audience. Even in his essential work on political economy, The Anti-Development State, Bello has avoided talking directly about Socialism. This is understandable, considering that even in his Rappler piece, Bello argues that even concepts supposedly as basic as "human rights" are far removed from the Filipino consciousness. How much more socialism? Thus, even while critiquing the neoliberal economic framework of Capitalism, Bello's recommendations end up taking the form of pro-"Economic Development" and "Democracy" rhetoric.

But we all understand that economic development under Capitalism is economic development only for the ruling elites. And a formally "democratic" (neo)liberal regime cannot guarantee an appreciation for human rights among the public. Something else is needed.

III

But perhaps the key difference between the Bello formulation and other radical Leftist assessments is one around the notion of universality and the supposed inherent sacredness of "human rights." Bello appears to approve of this latter type of formulation.

A radical Leftist take on this question can go like this:

Human rights are not innate or universal or true at all times and at all places. They do not in fact belong to human beings just by the mere fact of being born. Human rights are not attributes belonging to human beings which the community is then encouraged to observe and respect.

Rather, a more effective use of the concept would be to present human rights as exhortations for each and every single member of society to recognize -- and struggle for -- the betterment of their fellow members in society.

Formulated this way, we do not have "innate" rights. What we have is a promise -- or a conviction -- that the community will be able to provide us with a world that will allow each of us to reach our full potential as human beings. But what guarantees this promise is nothing else than the social and political order we have built for ourselves to realize these very goals.

Without a society that guarantees the betterment of each and every single member, no human rights can exist. And without a politics that allows us to distinguish the oppressor and the oppressed in society, no human rights consciousness can advance.

At present, this politics is the politics of Socialism.

IV

Thus, a more effective human rights campaign in the country can be carried out with a reinvigoration of radical Leftist politics. This is the sort of politics that will categorically state that the achievement of life's fullness under Capitalism is a dead end.

Given that the overwhelming characteristic of the Philippine society is grave economic inequality, a meaningful struggle for human rights must place poverty – by the destruction of the capitalist order which  propagates this inequality – at the forefront of its agenda.

What actually killed any appreciation of human rights in this country is the mass poverty that our people suffer day by day. In a society where poverty riots, people will not value life. In such a society, life is in fact cheap. That the mass of Filipinos do not find the daily loss of life alarming speaks directly of the value of life to them. In a situation of mass poverty and misery, what difference would it make if some scalawag that has taken a bit of drugs will be gunned down by the police, when people who don't do drugs don't have much of a life to show for anyway?

In struggling for positive rights -- the main content of Socialist politics -- we can most effectively give life to the notion of human rights. From a strategic standpoint, this would also make more sense to the Filipino masses as it speaks more closely to their own day-by-day concerns. Instead of telling them to recognize such a grand concept as “human rights,” we can show them that the very struggle for a decent wage, for regular employment, for land reform, for an end to discrimination -- constitute the very best promise of the human rights concept.

Besides, arguing only for fundamental rights makes the Left no different from bourgeois liberals who campaign just as tirelessly as the Left in this arena. And yet, as Bello himself said in a recent interview with Jacobin Magazine, the Left should exercise caution not to fall into the trap of being led by the traditional bourgeois elites in being in opposition to Rodrigo Duterte.

Already, we are seeing the increasing voice of entities like the Church, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, and, sadly, the Americans and other international "human rights groups" – actors who have not uttered a peep about the mass social inequality that has plagued our country for years. (Indeed, actors who may have directly or indirectly contributed to our society's present state.)

The proposal is thus to aim for a socialist society where poverty is not the overruling factor that determines an individual's life, where one can attain not only the dignity of living as, but also living with fellow human beings whose lives are not determined by the contingencies of want. Hopefully, by this, we can revive a new struggle for Socialism.

REPOST: Statement Against Attacks on Women's Dignity

In a low-handed attempt to derail investigations into the killing of suspected drug peddlers and dependents in the country, President Duterte has accused Senator Leila de Lima of being immoral, an adulterer, with links to the illegal drugs trade. The President is especially scathing in his attacks on women critics. Not only does he hurl accusations left and right as if there are no laws on evidence governing this country, accusations against women are also painted with personal malice—something you don’t hear against male critics. Demonstrating a conduct unbecoming of a head of state, indeed, strutting like a common brute, a bully, the President resorts to name calling when he should be presenting legal arguments and facts to support his policies.
Why does he find it necessary to readily label critics before giving proof? He does it to put opposition figures in a box where he could render them not human- when labeling critics as immoral or adulterous or drug suspects, it removes their dignity, their humanity. In the eyes of society, they become a social disease that needs to be eradicated. So follows soon after, critics also become victims of the heinous crime of murder. We know too well from the labeling of Jews by the Nazis, Tutsis as “cockroaches” in Rwanda, even activists as communists by the late dictator Marcos, results the familiar massacres and other crimes against humanity. Duterte starts with unsubstantiated accusations that end in cardboard signs. We are thus gravely alarmed that if this accusations are the kind of intelligence dirty data requested and used by the President to malign and destroy his critics, what sort of harmful information is gathered and passed on regarding drug suspects to the rank and file of the PNP and/or to the local government officials and personnel to justify EJKs, as well as intensify a coercive environment and a culture of fear.
As more people begin to question his methods we expect more tirades and threats from this man. But what will go down in history are the courageous women and men that speak out against this administration’s excesses-- at the frontline are Senator de Lima and Chief Justice Sereno. iDEFEND extols their example and stand with them amidst overwhelming adversity, amidst attacks by no less than the President himself. We stand with them in the deafening silence of the rest of society. We dedicate to them these words that gave meaning to the struggle of a generation against Martial Law, by the late Lean Alejandro: “In the line of fire is a place of honor”. Mabuhay po kayo at maraming salamat po.
___________________________________________________________
In Defense of Human Rights and Dignity Movement (iDEFEND) is a growing broad coalition of non-government organizations (NGOs), people’s organizations (POs), individual HRDs, human rights lawyers, religious sector and members of the academe which came together to defend and assert human rights for all.

http://www.philippinehumanrights.org/news/11-statements/8-statement-against-attacks-on-women-s-dignity

Bahagi ba ang Drug War sa adyenda ng Usapang Pangkapayapaan?

Magsisimula ulit ngayong linggo ang usapang pangkapayapaan sa pagitan ng gobyerno at ng Communist Party of the Philippines -- ang Leftist na grupo na may pinakamalakas na organisasyon sa Pilipinas. Ito'y dahil matapos ang maiksing panahon ng bangayan ni Joma Sison at ni Duterte, pinalaya ng pangulo ang mga bilanggong pulitikal na mga kasama ng CPP. Malapit sa CPP ang isyung ito, lalo pa't sinasabing may ilang matataas na lider ng grupo ang kabilang sa mga dating nakakulong.

Ayon sa isang praymer na inilabas ng Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), ang usapang pangkapayapaan (peace talks) umano ay "naglalayong tapusin ang armadong tunggalian na nagaganap sa buong Pilipinas sa pagitan ng [gobyerno] at NDFP." Sa bahagi umano ng NDF, "ang pangunahing hakbang para sa pagtigil ng armadong labanan ay paglutas ng mga batayang suliranin ng mamamayan upang magkaroon ng tunay na pagbabago sa lipunan."

Sa puntong ito, kabilang sa mga pag-uusapan ngayong linggo ay ang "socio-economic reforms" at "political and constitutional reforms." Ang pinaka-layunin nito ay ang matapos na sa wakas ang laganap na kahirapan sa bansa.

Ngunit ang "social and economic reforms" ay isang masaklaw na usapin. Bahagi nito ang mga isyung pumapatungkol sa kahirapan, kagutuman, trabaho, kawalan ng lupa at tirahan, militarisasyon at iba pa. At bahagi rin nito ang usapin ng Karapatang Pantao -- isang isyu na kailanman ay hindi kinilala ni Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte.

Ang centerpiece ng programang pang-goberyno ni Duterte ay ang Gyera Kontra Droga. Sa mga nakaraang buwan ng malawakang paglulunsad ng kampanyang ito, tila ang mga pinaka napuruhan ay ang libo-libong mahihirap na Pilipino. Daan-daan na sa kanila ang namatay -- marami rito sa mga hindi malamang sirkumstansya.

Magiging bahagi kaya ng usapang pangkayapaan sa pagitan ng gobyerno ni Duterte at ng CPP-NDF ang isyu ng Drug War? Igigiit kaya ng NDF na kailangang maghinay-hinay ang kapulisan sa pamamaslang? At kung igiit nila ito, papayag kaya si Duterte? Sa ngayon ay may ilang posibleng scenario:

• Hinding-hindi papayag dito si Duterte. At dahil sa prinsipyadong pananaw ng NDF sa usapin ng Human Rights, hindi tulad ni Duterte, ikatitigil nito ang peace talks.

• Hindi papayag si Duterte, ngunit ipagpapatuloy pa rin ng NDF ang alyansa sa kanya at tutuloy-tuloy lamang ang peace talks, basta't hindi na muling pag-uusapan ang droga. Maaaring isipin ng NDF na tutal, mukhang aprubado naman ng masa ang Gyera Kontra Droga, kahit na marami na ang nalalabag ang pantaong karapatan, kahit ang ilan pa rito'y napagkamalan lang.

Matatapos ang unang bahagi ng muling pagbubukas ng peace talks matapos ang sampung araw. Abangan ang susunod na kabanata.

Thousands protest planned Marcos burial in the Libingan ng mga Bayani

Around 5,000 people (not "hundreds" as the network GMA reported) under a rainy Sunday morning attended a protest gathering against the planned burial of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes' Cemetery) next month.

The mobilization, which organizers called a "Citizens' Assembly," is the first major protest act against a decision being pushed by President Rodrigo Duterte. However, the event did not tackle human rights issues, but stuck with the Marcos burial problem.

The protesters, mostly wearing white, did not leave their places in front of the giant Lapu-Lapu monument despite brief moments of heavy downpour. The program began at around 9:30 and lasted for two hours.

The protesters listened as guest speakers narrated first-hand stories of torture they experienced under the Marcos regime. The speakers -- artists, economists, activists, academics, politicians -- debunked common misconceptions such as the supposed "Golden Years" experienced during the Marcos era, which they said is not supported by the facts. They said burying Marcos at the Libingan would send the "wrong message" about what the Marcos era was all about.

The atmosphere was marked by simplicity as people listened to speeches, with the occasional cheering and jeering as speakers asked the crowd whether they thought Marcos was indeed a "hero." Older folks also relived their times as activists during the Martial Law years.

Some of the speakers were Walden Bello, Joel Lamangan, Riza Hontiveros-Baraquel, Teddy Baguilat, Aida Santos, Leila de Lima and former Senator Wigberto Tanada.

Among the leftist organizations present that brought contingents were Sanlakas and Partido Lakas ng Masa. The mobilization was initiated by the Coalition Against the Marcos Burial in Libingan Ng Mga Bayani.

RPST: Strong dissent: Luneta rally set vs hero's burial for Marcos

Lawmakers, student groups, and advocacy groups are urging the public to help stop a hero's burial for former president Ferdinand Marcos.
Various groups have formed 'Coalition Against the Marcos Burial in Libingan Ng Mga Bayan,' which aims to prevent Marcos's interment at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB).
They are inviting the public to wear white and join a non-partisan citizens' assembly at the Lapu-Lapu Area, in Rizal Park, Manila on Sunday, August 14.
"Every day that passes, Marcos' burial at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani becomes more and more inevitable," wrote the organizers on their Facebook page.
In a memorandum dated August 7, the Department of National Defense instructed Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to plan and prepare Marcos's interment at the heroes' cemetery.
The burial has been projected to be held on September 18, after a nod from President Rodrigo Duterte.
The coalition cited Duterte's willingness to bury the late dictator in the site is "because he doesn't see widespread opposition to it." With the assembly, they aim "to prove him wrong."
"Before the president makes an official announcement and goes past the point of no return, we Filipinos need to make our strong opposition loud and clear," they wrote.
They said that because they recognize that the ultimate decision remains with Duterte, they call for the assembly to be able to offer a solution to the chief executive.
"We believe that the LNMB issue is too critical to how we define ourselves as a nation and to how our future as a nation will be shaped - we cannot lose focus," they added.
Susan Quimpo, one of the organizers of the assembly, told ABS-CBN News Sunday's program will focus solely on the "issue of Marcos burial and [their] opposition to it, and [their] request to President Duterte to change his mind about it."
"We have a petition to President Duterte outlining our reasons for requesting the burial not be held in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. Mayroon po tayong petition signing na mangyayari on Sunday," she said.
She revealed, there will also be simultaneous rallies planned in Cebu, Bacolod, and Davao.
"Sa ngayon, sabi ni President Duterte, mag-rally daw. E di, magra-rally tayo. For now, that is the expression that we see of this request to President Duterte," she said.
She also urged citizens to course their opposition through their congressional district representatives.
Quimpo was also among the conveners of the Bawat Bato initiative which laid rocks and stones bearing the names of Martial Law victims on Marcos's burial site.
She emphasized that Marcos has no room in the heroes' cemetery in Taguig.
Republic Act 10368 or the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act signed in 2013, she cited, "provides reparation for the human rights victims of the Marcos regime."
"Kung nagbibigay ng reparations yung batas, ibig sabihin, talagang may human rights violations, 'di ba po? When you say human rights violations, automatic po, the state is responsible for it," she said.
"Ang dami pong claimants--umabot po ng 75,730 claimants. Ito po ang clear cut na batas na po ito, saying that he is guilty of human rights violation," she said.
Five of Quimpo's siblings were among those who were victims of human rights violations.
"Sa tingin ko, hindi naman karapat-dapat that he is given a hero's burial, when [there are] tens of thousands of people who were the real heroes fighting for freedom and justice and democracy," she said.
Apart from the human rights violations, Quimpo also underscored that there is proof Marcos laundered the people's money.
"In fact, even the Swiss courts have basically said na yung kaniyang deposits na umaabot sa approximately $10-billion ay ill-gotten wealth," she said.
She also noted, Marcos "was deposed by popular uprising," and as a soldier was "given dishonorable dismissal by the people that he was supposed to serve."
"Because he is a plunderer, because he is a violator of human rights, and fake naman yung kaniyang war medals and war records, patong-patong na po ito. It is overwhelming proof that he is not a hero," she said.

http://news.abs-cbn.com/focus/08/10/16/strong-dissent-luneta-rally-set-vs-heros-burial-for-marcos

Under the beat of the baton

In February, a few months before he would take the Philippine presidency in phenomenal fashion, Rodrigo Duterte was quoted as saying that he would grant pardon to law enforcers who might end up killing criminals while carrying out the new regime's social cleansing campaign.

This month, he repeated this statement. Only by this time, Duterte has also said he would double the pay of the members of the police force. Until that happens, the administration could significantly increase the police "hazard pay" for putting their lives on the line. Meanwhile, the drug war will continue, and any talk of an investigation into the alarming number of deaths will not be entertained.

At present, Philippine society is at war. It is officially a war against drugs -- a campaign to rid the nation of its dregs. It is being commandeered by a man we elected. And on its frontline is the national Police force, the people's supposed protector.

However, a look at the records will remind us of just what sort of institution it is that Duterte has chosen to be in the frontline of his campaign.

Just in 2014, Amnesty International published a report that reminded us about who the national Police is. “Torture is still rife, … the overwhelming majority of reports of torture involve police officers.” And yet the content of that report itself is not new. It merely put real faces into a phenomenon that is, as it wrote, the Philippine's “dark, open secret.”

Faces like those of Alfreda Disbarro, a former police asset who the police took and brought to a room. On top of her head, they placed a bottle which they threatened to blow to bits if she would not do what they wanted her to do. Later they forced a dirty mop into her mouth, while beating her on the side. They wanted Disbarro to admit to being a drug pusher.

The report presented data from the Commission on Human Rights which has recorded a total of 457 cases of torture all over the Philippines since 2001. The highest figure was in 2013 when 75 torture cases were reported, 60 of which implicated the Police. The Philippines passed an Anti-Torture Law in 2009. Not a single person in authority has been convicted.

That report pointed out that, to begin with, cases involving the police are underreported and almost undocumented. But in 2010, another report, from The Asia Foundation, stated another kind of police involvement in condemnable acts that cast doubt on their supposed job description of protecting the citizens – extrajudicial killings.

Like the AI report, their data were likewise gathered from 2001, until 2010. They recorded 390 victims of extrajudicial killings. Of the 837 suspects, 9% were attributed to the Police – third only to the military, another state actor, and the New People's Army.

But in fact the hand of the police is tainted even in deaths attributed to the armed forces. Highlighting a similarity with another country whose main killers were police death squads, Kenya, the report noted that victims killed in the Philippines were identified beforehand and killed in remote areas after being detained first by the police. Majority of the victims in the Philippines were identified as legal political activists – activists who first get handcuffed by the police and get brought to their stations.


What is the Police, and who does it serve? In the Philippines, it traces its roots in the Spanish civil guards whose cruelty toward Filipinos the national hero Jose Rizal depicted in his books. But the current police force as we know it descends from the Philippine Constabulary, an institution which co-emerged with American rule in the country. Thus, in the Philippines, policing has in fact functioned as a tool of foreign oppression against the natives.

When the colonizers left, its control was handed over to the local ruling elites. It was the same PC that the dictator Ferdinand Marcos would inherit and would use efficiently. After Marcos was thrown out, police control was handed over to the Department of Interior and Local Government, occasionally figuring in scandals ("Euro Generals" corruption case; the Maguindanao Massacre) and from time to time showing its ineptness, as in the botched rescue mission of Hong Kong bus hostages in Manila in 2010.

The police has been a feared figure in the everyday lives of Filipinos -- a steady presence that exists to protect the ruling elite's banks and malls, and who disperse political rallies against the Philippine's social ills.

The Police has been understood as “an instrument for regulating the lower orders.” As such, it is an institution of force. But according to Richard Seymour, properly understanding the role of the police has to take into account what exactly it defends: “What they're doing is exerting violence and coercion not only in defense of the legal and juridical forms of capitalist social relations, but in the defense of a moral and symbolic order, which expresses their own relationships to the dominant ideology, to the institutions they work in, the (professional middle) class they belong to, and to the social world they police.”

A violent social order where the poorest families – millions of them – subsist on P5,750 every month and the richest families earn ten times as much, breeds instability -- and more violence. And the police is a violent state element precisely because it was designed to be so.

But if the police, on an average day, already exhibit these tendencies. What it could do under the guise of the drug war, and in the hands of Duterte, points only to a more anti-people trajectory.

Already, the numbers are troubling. According to the Citizen's Council for Human Rights, from January 1 to May 9 this year, prior to Duterte's election, number of reported deaths from drug-related violence was 39. After May 10, in just two months, this number has risen to 251.

And who are the victims? Those we know of paint a grim picture. Stories like those of Jefferson Bunuan, a scholar of a local NGO who was brutally killed in a "buy-bust" operation. A criminology student, he dreamed of being a policeman. Stories in the Philippine social media of people arrested just because they "looked like" the bad guy.

Already, the groundwork for a regime where especially the shabby-clothed, the tattooed, the un-schooled, the different, the people with the least capability to defend themselves -- are easily carted off to numberless rooms by gun- and baton-wielding men in uniform. They have a name for this. This is called “law enforcement.” Meanwhile, the public cheers and eggs the president on, reveling in the new-found “peace and order,” which is in fact nothing more than the slow surrender of all our freedoms as a civilized people. The country is dancing into lawlessness, and the Police and other armed men are keeping the beat.

Because early on, Rodrigo Duterte himself has shown how little his regard is for the concept of “human rights.” When the police he leads swoops down on  another poverty-stricken community to smoke out the drug den, the right of supposed suspects to not get whacked, to not get arrested without charges, to be presumed innocent at first – to just be respected as human beings – will not be nearest their minds.

If President Rodrigo Duterte is really serious in helping build a fairer Philippine society, he should stop emboldening and empowering the very same forces that threaten the masses.

Meanwhile, we have to study another form of society – one that does not use force and brutality just so it could impose order amidst the inequalities of Capitalism.

REPOST: An administration in search of an opposition by Walden Bello

This is essential reading on the current state of progressive politics under Rodrigo Duterte. The original Rappler piece is here.

An administration in search of an opposition

A strong opposition based on the defense of universal human rights is the best way to ensure the future of Philippine democracy

Walden Bello 
July 10, 2016

The events of the last few weeks have engendered much goodwill towards the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte at the same that it has triggered apprehensions about where it is headed.

Hopes

The naming and shaming of 5 former and current police generals for their alleged involvement in the drug trade was only the most dramatic in a series of moves by the new president that elicited popular approval.

Hopes for a new social dispensation were stirred by several fast-moving events, among them a promise that the administration would end contractualization and an announcement that an executive order would institutionalize Freedom of Information. That a new deal was at hand for the marginalized sectors appeared imminent with the appointment of people associated with the National Democratic Front (NDF) to the top posts in the Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Social Welfare and Development, and the National Anti-Poverty Commission.

Perhaps the appointment that drew the most applause from civil society was that of anti-mining advocate Gina Lopez as head of Department of the Environment and Natural Resources. Civil society also cheered when Mr Duterte blasted Lopez’s critic, mining magnate Manny Pangilinan, as “just a puppet of the foreign based Salim Group, while I am the chosen president of the Republic of the Philippines!”

Indeed, we seem to be entering not simply a new presidency but a new era.

Fears

Hopes, however, have mingled with fears. The spate of killings of suspected drug pushers and users triggered suspicions that crooked cops were getting rid of their accomplices or that they were acting on the green light to kill drug pushers and addicts with no or minimal attention to due process that they feel they had gotten from the president.

Words matter, said human rights advocates, worried that Duterte’s statements prior to his ascent to the presidency that citizens had the right to kill drug pushers if they resisted and his offering a higher bounty for dead rather than living criminals might already have inaugurated a wave of vigilantism that might claim innocent lives. This could easily degenerate, they said, into people settling scores with their enemies simply by branding them as pushers.

The numbers are grim: according to the Philippine Association of Human Rights Advocates (PAHRA), there have been 163 killings since the May 9 elections, most but not all of them in violent encounters with the police.

The curious conjunction of moves that apparently promote economic and social rights with advocacy of extrajudicial killings has provoked two interesting responses. One is that we should not dwell too much on the president’s endorsement of extrajudicial killings or violations of due process since he is, after all, committed to taking measures that will advance the social and economic welfare of the marginalized masses. The second response is that what matters are not individual rights but “class rights,” and we should not bother too much with the “so-called rights” of people that belong to the exploiting classes and the criminal class or “lumpenproletariat.”

These views are worrisome. For one, the so-called social and economic reforms are still promises, and it may were well happen that they could be blocked or diluted by compromises with vested interests. But this is not the principal reason why these views are wrong and dangerous.
To focus first on the second response, one has only to recall the so-called “Ahos (‘Garlic’) Campaign” that ravaged the ranks of the left during the 1980’s to realize the terrible consequences of such a stance. Some 2000 people were killed with no regard for due process simply because they were arbitrarily branded as class enemies or “agents of the ruling class.” Although this view is now held by a distinct minority of progressives, its continuing influence in some sectors of the left must not be underestimated.

The first response – that we should give the President some leeway in his methods of dealing with crime since he is, after all, supportive of social and economic reform – is very popular. In fact, one can say that a very large number of those who voted for Duterte voted for him because they approved of his extreme measures to curb crime, along with his promise to root out corruption and his strong condemnation of poverty and inequality.

Now, given the poor record of previous administrations on law and order, one can certainly understand why people are fed up with and support drastic measures on crime and drugs. But the popularity of Duterte’s law and order stance does not make it right. One can definitely agree with Duterte supporters that the administration of justice is terrible, with too many crooks evading the law, but it is quite another thing to say that the way to deal with them is via extrajudicial execution and skipping due process altogether.

Fundamental rights and positive rights

When he first signaled his intention to run for the presidency last year, I said that Duterte’s candidacy would be good for democracy because it would force liberals and progressives to defend a proposition that they had long taken for granted: that human rights and due process are core values of Philippine society.

Let us now address this urgent task.

The right to life, right to freedom, right to be free from discrimination, and right to due process have often been called fundamental rights because they assert the intrinsic value of each person’s existence and underline that this value is not bestowed by the state or society. They are also often called “negative” rights or “inalienable” rights to stress that other individuals, corporate bodies, or the state have no right to take them away or violate them.

What have now come to be known as “positive rights” such as the right to be free from poverty, the right to a status of economic equality with others, and the right to a life with dignity are those rights that promote the attainment of conditions that allow the individual or group to develop fully as a human being. Positive rights – sometimes referred to as social, economic, and cultural rights – build on negative or fundamental rights. The recognition and institutionalization of fundamental rights may have been historically prior to the recognition and achievement of positive rights but the latter are necessary extensions of the former. Rights, in short, are indivisible, and positive rights have a fragile foundation in a state where the basic right to life is negated by leaders who claim to be promoting them.

Liberal democracy vs authoritarian rule

One of the key functions of the state is to secure the life and limbs of its citizens, but this must be accomplished while respecting the full range of rights of its citizens. There is a necessary tension between not violating individual rights and achieving security and political order. This healthy tension is what distinguishes the liberal democratic or social democratic state from the authoritarian, fascist, Stalinist, or ISIS state.

To progressives and liberals, recognition and respect for human, civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights have been a fundamental thrust in the evolution of the Philippine polity, a process that has been influenced by landmark events in the history of democracy such as the French Revolution and the later struggles against colonialism, fascism, and Stalinism. Individual rights have been won in interconnected global struggles against ruling classes, imperial oppressors, corporations, and bureaucratic and military elites. This historical process has produced polities called liberal democracies and social democracies, the latter being distinguished by their greater stress on the achievement of the full range of positive rights, including universal social protection.

However, one must acknowledge that there has been a counter-thrust, one that has periodically emerged to challenge the primacy of the individual and human rights. This perspective places the state as the authority or arbiter of what “rights” the individual can enjoy, subordinates the welfare of the individual citizen to the security or needs of the state, and says that due process is principally one determined by the needs of the state and not by respect for the rights and welfare of the individual. This historical counter-thrust became dominant during the martial law period from 1972 to 1986 and it threatens to become dominant today, with support from a significant part of the citizenry.

The perils of Dutertismo

Currently, President Duterte embodies the view that refuses to recognize the universality of rights and denies due process to certain classes of people in the interest of combating crime and corruption. The majority of those who voted for him agreed with his stance. They form the social base of Dutertismo, a movement based on mass support for a leader who personifies the illiberal, extreme measures they feel is necessary to deal with crime, corruption, and other social problems.

At the risk of repeating ourselves, let us make 3 points with respect to this trend.

First, we do not question the goal of fighting crime. Indeed, we support it. But it cannot be achieved by trampling on human rights. No one has the right to take life except in the very special circumstance and in a very clear case of self-defense. Everyone is entitled to the enjoyment of those rights and their protection by the state. And if these rights must be limited for the greater good, then there must a legally sanctioned process to determine this. Wrongdoers must certainly be meted punishment, but even wrongdoers have rights and are entitled to due process.

Second, denying some classes of people these rights, as Duterte does, puts all of us on the slippery slope that could end up extending this denial to other groups, like one’s political enemies or people that “disrupt” public order, like anti-government demonstrators or people on striking for better pay. In this connection, remember that candidate Duterte threatened to kill workers who stood in the way of his economic development plans and made the blanket judgment that all journalists who had been assassinated were corrupt and deserved to be eliminated. That was no slip of the tongue.

Third, rights are indivisible. Measures that purportedly promote positive rights and advance the economic and social welfare of citizens rest on a fragile basis and can easily be taken back if they are not recognized as stemming from and resting on the basic right to life. Upholding positive rights while negating fundamental rights involves one not only in a logical but in a very real contradiction. To say I will liberate you from exploitation but hold your life hostage to your “good” behavior involves one in a contradiction that is ultimately unsustainable; this is the contradiction that unravelled the Stalinist socialiist states of Eastern Europe.

Strategic opposition

The President’s campaign and his program were driven by his depreciation of human rights and due process. There is a fundamental political cleavage in the country between those who support his views on human rights and due process and those opposed to them. Thus those of us who consider human rights and due process as core values cannot but find ourselves in strategic opposition to this administration.

Being in opposition does not mean denying the legitimacy of the administration. It means recognizing the legitimacy conferred by elections but registering disagreement with the central platform on which it was won, that is, the control of crime and corruption not through the rule of law but mainly through extrajudicial execution and violation of due process.

It is always difficult to be in opposition to a popular administration. This is why one must commend proven human rights stalwarts like Rep Teddy Baguilat and Edcel Lagman, who have stood up for principles and declared themselves in the minority or opposition even as the vast majority of their partymates in the Liberal Party jumped en masse into the Duterte bandwagon after the election to share in the spoils of the man they had opposed. More than their erstwhile comrades, Baguilat and Lagman know that popularity is fleeting, and it is not worth going against your principles to accommodate it.

But with the disintegration of a viable opposition in the House and Senate, the unpredictable posture of the Supreme Court, and silence in the bureaucracy (with the notable exception of the Commission on Human Rights), it becomes imperative that civil society must become the central locus of opposition.

Opposition does not mean total opposition. It means critical opposition, whereby one may support positive legislative measures proposed by the administration even as one maintains a strategic opposition to it owing to its violation of one’s core values and principles. In short, one should definitely support measures such as agrarian reform, an end to contractualization, institutionalization of the freedom of information, and the phasing out of mining, for these are progressive measures that can only redound to the welfare of society and the environment. But fundamental rights are fundamental rights, and since these basic rights are threatened by the philosophy and politics of the current administration, then one must stand strategically in opposition to it even as one supports its measures that enhance people’s positive rights.

Defense of one’s core values, however, is not the only reason for being in opposition. The existence of a strong opposition is the best defense of democracy, for nothing more surely leads to the dismantling of democracy than the concentration of power. In this regard, we believe the president when he says that he has no intention of remaining in power beyond 6 years. But, if we have learned anything from politics, it is that good intentions can easily be corrupted by absolute power. Paradoxically, the best way we can help President Duterte keep his promise is to provide him with a vigorous opposition.

In sum, a strong opposition based on the defense of universal human rights is the best way to ensure the future of Philippine democracy. – Rappler.com

By Socy major - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11850343

REPOST: Extra Judicial Killings: Normalizing Criminality Under the Guise of Peace and Order

(Read the original here.)

The Citizen’s Council for Human Rights (CCHR) strongly condemns the escalating number of killings of suspected drug pushers and drug dependents who said to have died either during so-called legitimate police operations or at the hands of unknown gunmen.

The surge in fatalities is too alarming to be ignored: from January 1 to May 9 this year (129 days), reported deaths from drug-related violence was 39. But the death count suddenly swelled after May 10. In a matter of 64 days, 251 deaths have already been reported. What makes these spate of executions most worrisome is that this was prompted by President Duterte’s pronouncements, made even before his assumption into office, that urged the police, ordinary citizens and later, the New Peoples Army to kill all those involved in the illegal drug trade, with the promise that he would shield them against any legal consequences.

Coming from the Chief Executive himself, this declaration legitimizes a system of crime response where the police and regular citizens become prosecutors, judges and executioners. The Criminal Justice System provides safeguards to protect suspected offenders and all citizens against arbitrary acts through transparency, and checks and balances. The arbitrary killing of suspects bypasses this system altogether,infringes on fundamental due process tenets and denies people the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The social costs and dangers of arbitrary methods should not be underestimated. The disregard of safeguards endangers everyone in Philippine society: anyone can now be accused of any crime or involvement in illegal drugs and be executed before and without having a chance to publicly defend themselves in court.There is no reason why these violations will not extend to law abiding citizens and human rights and environmental defenders, as in the case of Gloria Capitan, grandmother and campaigner for her community’s environmental rights.

Human Rights organizations and the CHR have spent over three decades sensitizing security forces on Human Rights values and ideals, but these efforts are about to be for naught.

Besides, Extra Judicial Executions, the Duterte administration’s war on drugs has inspired other excesses. At least one woman and a child has been sexually harassed in the course of operations. On many occasions, suspected drug peddlers and drug dependents, before having their day in court, are paraded in public places.

Apart from being an affront to the dignity of persons and their loved ones, shame campaigns and sexual harassment also undermine the well-being of communities and Philippine society in general. Such acts, categorized as psychological torture is prohibited by the Anti-Torture Act of 2009 or RA 9745. By allowing such illegal acts by authorities,we contribute to the culture haphazard, harmful and arbitrary dispensation of justice. Local Executives should treat drug dependents with compassion and facilitate their rehabilitation while ensuring that those involved in the drug trade are brought to justice through legitimate processes.

The Citizen’s Council for Human Rights does not believe these methods which deliberately violate the right to life, right to dignity and due process, will solve the country’s crime and illegal drugs problem. In fact, the social costs and dangers of employing extra-legal methods are high.
Finally, CCHR calls on the Duterte government to:

1. Immediately stop the killings of suspected criminals and drug related offenders. Law enforcement authorities and government officials should abide by our criminal justice system, by securing warrants prior to arrest, strict observance of police rules of engagement and maximum tolerance in the arrest of suspects, filing of appropriate cases and bringing them to the BJMP without harm and allowing them to stand trial. The killing of suspects outside the rule of law is palliative and does not tackle the core of the crime and drug problems.
2. Strictly prohibit LGU Executives and law enforcement units from implementing torture and dehumanizing methods in the fight against crime and drugs. The listing of and knocking on houses of persons suspected of peddling and using drugs to as well as the “walks of shame” destroy the humanity of persons and their families. These individuals are also deprived of their right to due process and to reintegrate with their communities with dignity.
3. Professionalize and raise the human rights and respect for the rule of law standards of the PNP, PDEA, NBI and other law enforcement agencies and rid their ranks of those involved in corruption and syndicated crime. The most professional and efficient law enforcement agencies in the world are those which have solid human rights foundations and those that strictly adhere to the very laws they are tasked to uphold. Strict adherence to the Rule of Law, institutional safeguards and respect for human rights must be the cornerstones of Philippine law enforcement modernization and professionalization.
4. Review and reform the criminal justice system and root out corruption in the prosecution service, courts, the BJMP and the Bucor as soon as possible with the view of making the whole system prompt and efficient in dispensing justice and reforming persons.
5. Institute mechanisms widely accessible to ordinary Filipinos so that corruption, involvement in crime, violations to the rule of law and due process as well as extra judicial killings and other grave excesses can be promptly reported to relevant institutions.
6. Review and reconsider state policy on drug addiction and make available and accessible proper drug rehabilitation programs and facilities to the majority of drug dependents who come from the poor. Drug dependents are persons who are ill and are victims of addictive substances. While the manufacture and sale of drugs are crimes, drug addiction is not. Drug abuse is a public health issue and it should be the DOH and its counterpart units at the LGU handling drug rehabilitation programs and facilities, not corrections officials. 60% of those in Philippine jails and penal institutions are incarcerated due to drug offenses under the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2009 or RA 9165; these are people who need proper treatment.
7. Invest in the realization of a life of dignity for all. Essential services such as education, health, housing, food and the commons such as water and electricity and other basic needs which people need to get out of poverty and become productive members of Philippine society, should be democratized. These requirements of a life of dignity provide people with economic and social opportunities, enabling them to pave their way out of often unbearable conditions which engender anti-social values and behavior. We should address the roots of rampant crime and extensive drug trade and abuse as well as many other social problems by stamping out poverty and social idleness. These social levelers include a good public education which exists for the benefit of public order. Currently, we waste human resources because so many in poor communities are unskilled, when they could contribute to nation building. When all in Philippine society enjoy a productive life of dignity, there will be few left who are prone and vulnerable to dysfunctional behavior or predisposed to a life of crime and drugs.
8. Halt all initiatives toward the reimposition of the Death Penalty and the lowering of the age of discernment.
9. Investigate and prosecute the authorities responsible for human rights violations in the course of the drug war implementation. Justice must be served to the families of those killed, tortured and to those who suffered from sexual harassment.

Stop the killings and shame campaigns! No to vigilantism!

Address the root cause of social problems!

Bring offenders to justice through due process and the rule of law!

CCHR is a broad coalition of non-government organizations (NGOs), people’s organizations (POs), human rights lawyers, religious sector and members of the academe that came together to defend and assert human rights for all.

The youth strike against the killings

See story here.