Human and right August 16, 2006

LAST week, the notorious Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan was asked by the media if he had not in fact personally declared martial law in the Nueva Ecija-Bulacan corridor of Luzon. The reason for the question was that his soldiers were accosting folk in the streets and making house-to-house searches looking for NPA rebels. The beleaguered folk were being asked to account for themselves in the form of IDs, "cedulas" [community taxcertificates] and other means of identification. This sent them scrambling to city hall to get cedulas, causing the forms to run out.

In reply to the question, Palparan raised his voice and said heatedly: "Why martial law? Aren't people supposed to carry IDs with them?"

That's the quality of mind of the person Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has tasked to keep people free and safe from their enemies.

Last I looked, in a democracy people were still presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Of course, people are supposed to carry IDs with them. That is so they can go about their daily transactions and not so they can satisfy the curiosity of cops and soldiers who may accost them at will. Last I looked, in a democracy cops and soldiers may not stop anyone without probable cause and they may not enter houses without a search warrant. Last I looked, in a democracy the equation was not unless people can show proof they are who they say they are, they must be New People's Army rebels. The equation was, unless the authorities can show proof people are not who they say they are, they must be honest citizens.

It's in a dictatorship, or tyranny or martial law -- three words for the same thing -- where people are presumed guilty until proven innocent. That is what we now have in concentrated form in Nueva Ecija-Bulacan and in more diluted form in the rest of the country. That is a recipe for a bloodbath. And a bloodbath is what we've been having of late.

You want a more reasonable presumption, try this: Palparan is a mindless thug and a vicious cutthroat unless he can prove himself otherwise.

This was shortly before the London authorities uncovered a plot by terrorists to bomb airplanes going to the United States. Since then, the United States and Britain have gone on a new wave of terrorist alert, which almost inevitably has been picked up by this government. Which threatens to do to the rest of the country what Palparan is already doing to parts of Luzon.

I am glad that Sen. Aquilino "Nene" Pimentel Jr. opposes the new terror bills that Arroyo's hatchet men have promptly laid on the floor of Congress, saying he will not support any terror bill unless today's killings stop. That is the only position any Filipino in his right mind can have. This government's qualification to fight terror is nowhere inevidence. It is not merely that it is incompetent to fight terror, it is that it is directly and obdurately responsible for the terror that grips the land today. Or never mind that abstraction, it is responsible for Palparan. That is terrorism pure and simple.

There is a very real cause for alarm. I saw Benjamin Defensor on TV last weekend, and the things he was saying made my flesh crawl. We have to follow America's lead and take the fight against terrorism very, very seriously, he said, because terrorism is a global threat. One of the things we have to do in that light, he said, is to reexamine our conceptof human rights because we have a "parochial view" of it.

At the very least, Defensor seems to have forgotten that one of the most respected institutions in his favorite country, The New York Times, no longer considers his favorite boss, Arroyo, an ally in the fight against terror. It considers his favorite boss a liability, if not an enemy, in the fight against terror. Her drift toward dictatorship, following in thefootsteps of Ferdinand Marcos, it said in a March issue, was not dissuading terror, it was abetting terror.

Pray, what is so parochial about not being stopped on a road or not having soldiers barge into your house in the middle of the night for no other reason than routine inspection? What is so parochial about not being jailed, tortured or killed for no other reason than that you cannot produce a cedula? What is so parochial about having the right to assemble, to speak freely, or just plain be able to live and breathe unless you've committed a crime?

It's time we stopped that idiocy about curtailing human rights – or indeed deeming human rights an enemy -- each time we talk of fighting terror. Human rights are not an impediment to fighting terror, they are a weapon in fighting terror. No, they are the only way to fight terror. Dictatorial, tyrannical and fascistic ways do not douse terror, theyinflame terror. They are the best assurance terror will not go away but riot like the mind of Palparan.

It's plain common sense. The only way you can effectively fight terror is to have the people with you. The military cannot stop terror, only the people can. It is a people working collectively, determinedly and enthusiastically to thwart terror at every turn that can stop terror. You cannot get a people working collectively, determinedly and enthusiastically to thwart terror if you deem them terrorists until they can prove themselves not to be so. You can only get them working commonly, resolutely and angrily to stop you.

Human rights, a democratic order, the sweet air of freedom -- three ways of saying the same thing -- are the only reason people can have to want to fight terror. You offer as reason for fighting a threat something far worse than the threat itself, and people will prefer the threat itself. You offer as reason for fighting the New People's Army the kind of world Palparan and Arroyo represent, the people will embrace the NPA like a long-lost child.

That's why they call them human rights. They are human and they are right.

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