Not so smart
December 7th, 2002
A group with the acronym smart—for Southern Mindanao Alliance and Response to Terrorism—has urged the passage of the antiterrorism bills that have been pending in Congress since early this year.
Representatives Joseph Ace Durano and Imee Marcos are the authors of two House of Representatives versions of an antiterrorism bill, while Sen. Robert Barbers is the author of the lone Senate version.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has endorsed Barbers’s Senate Bill 1980 and Durano’s House Bill 4980 for congressional approval. If both bills are passed by their chambers, the two versions would be reconciled into one bill.
I don’t know who the members of smart are, but it should explore the option of getting a new spokesman. This is to assume that it has something to say, which we can grant out of both charity and the recognition that anyone with access to a microphone has the right to either belt out a song or express his opinions no matter how uninformed or stupid they may be.
The smart spokesman is reported to have said that an antiterrorism bill would be “good for the country.” In the same breath, he described those opposed to the bills as “the biggest coddlers of terrorist groups.”
Apparently he had the human rights and other advocacy groups in mind, as he indeed said so.
“These cause-oriented groups or Left-leaning organizations should cooperate first and see the merit of the bill in accordance with [sic] the serious problem of terrorism the country is facing. This is the time these groups should show their sincerity to help the country by supporting the proposed antiterror bill. Their opposition only gives consent to [sic] and reinforce [sic] the chaos these terrorists have been doing [sic].”
After asking for the “cooperation” of the groups he accuses of “coddling” (defined by the The New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language as “to treat tenderly like an invalid; to pamper”) terrorists, this not-so-smart spokesman for smart went on to say that the same groups should “propose possible solutions to the problem of terrorism instead of misleading the people to adhere to their ulterior motive to topple down [sic] duly constituted democracy [sic] and authorities and eventually lead the country to disaster.”
In his less than coherent foray into the English language, one thing is missing: an explanation of why he thinks the bill that could emerge from Congress based on the Durano and Barbers bills would be “good for the country.”
To defend that proposition, he has to have read the bills—which I doubt. The bills make for interesting reading, however, if only for what they reveal about the state of the proponents’ commitment to democratic rights. Lawyers’ and human rights groups have also cricitized the bills for a number of reasons.
All three bills—Marcos’s HB 3802, Durano’s HB 4980 and Barbers’s SB 1980—have also caught the attention of international human rights groups, among them London-based Article 19 (named after Article 19 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights), which is committed to defending free expression and freedom of information worldwide.
In an October 2002 analysis of the bills using internationally accepted human rights standards, Article 19 identified at least three key problems with all three bills.
Philippine lawyers’ and human rights groups have noted the first of these.
“All three draft bills,” says the Article 19 analysis, “employ an extremely wide and often vague definition of terrorism and of terrorist acts. [The Barbers bill], for example, defines terrorism as including acts which cause destruction of property with an intent to disturb public order, in the advancement of ‘any form of belief.’
“An unruly participant in a demonstration who smashes a window could be covered by this definition. [Although] such behavior is not to be encouraged, at the same time it hardly qualifies as terrorism.”
The same provision of SB 1980 (Section 3, Acts of Terrorism) cited by Article 19 in fact could classify as terrorism any act “impeding the operation of public utilities.” Which means that a jeepney strike, or a picket at the Meralco office which prevents employees from reporting for work, would qualify as a terrorist act.
The Article 19 analysis notes that the Marcos bill includes a comprehensive list of “unlawful activities” which results in defining “a wide range of minor illegal activities” as terrorist acts.
On the other hand, the Durano bill “defines terrorism as the use of violence, ‘usually intended to influence an audience’ to create a state of fear to cause either individuals or groups to alter their behavior.
“Terms like ‘usually’ have no place in a definition like this, or arguably in any law, as they fail to provide any clarity as to the scope of the term. As with [the Marcos bill] the draft sets out a wide range of prohibited ‘acts of terrorism.’”
Article 19 concludes: “These excessively broad definitions are problematical in themselves, given the role of law-enforcement agencies in applying this sort of legislation and the very real possibility of abuse, for example, against unpopular or ‘troublesome’ political movements.
“This is particularly so, given that all three definitions apply not only to actual acts but also to threats of action.”
The Durano and Barbers bills penalize with life imprisonment or death not only the commission of “terrorist acts” but also conspiracies or decisions to commit terrorist acts. The Marcos bill also identifies “omission”—the failure not to do anything to prevent a terrorist act—as itself a terrorist act.
A further problem with the bills has to do with their authorizing police and other security forces to intercept and monitor through wiretapping and other means of communications in whatever form, whether it be by phone, ordinary mail, e-mail, text messaging or fax.
“Interception of communications,” says Article 19, “exerts a chilling effect on freedom of expression and also represents a serious intrusion of the State into the right to privacy. There are numerous instances of interception powers being abused by authorities for illegitimate goals, of which the [US] Watergate scandal is the most famous.”
Article 19 points out that “limits on official powers of interception [of communications] have been put in place slowly over the years largely in response to abuses, and it is of great importance that they not be swept aside in response to one incident, no matter how serious.”
A third problem with the bills has to do with their provisions on the deportation and refusal of entry (exclusion) of suspected foreign terrorists.
“The standards set out in the draft bills are very low and highly subjective, and there are no safeguards for their abuse,” says Article 19.
“They might be abused, for example, to exclude any foreign national critical of the government’s policy on terrorism, or on anything else, for that matter. Bill 1980, inasmuch as it is retroactive [and also unconstitutional because it would then have the characteristics of an ex post facto law, or a law that punishes an act committed before the law was in effect], would apply to anyone who had in the past, on the very broad definition set out in law, committed an act of terrorism.”
“[Former South African President] Nelson Mandela,” concludes Article 19, “could probably be refused entry to the Philippines on this basis.”
The smart spokesman, since he has probably not read the bills, much less studied them, could only claim that the country’s legislators would take human rights into consideration when they deliberate on the bills.
Some of them would, but whether these few would have the numbers to either remove the offending provisions or include safeguards against the abuses that will certainly be committed in the name of antiterrorism is another matter altogether. It doesn’t take an exceptionally smart person, only an exceptionally ignorant one, to see from this country’s experience that if you can imagine the worst, it will happen.