CHR-7 admits confusion over anti-terrorism law

While the Catholic bishops and cause-oriented groups have denounced the anti-terrorism law, which would take effect this Sunday, the Commission on Human Rights-7 has admitted that it is confused on how to comply with the law’s provision.

CHR-7 regional director Alejandro Alonzo said the anti-terror law, known as Republic Act 9372 or the Human Security Act of 2007, bestowed on the commission the power to prosecute, which contradicts it constitutional power of being an investigative body only.

The CHR is not ready for such new direction of exercising quasi-judicial function because its lawyers do not have the experience for such, said Alonzo.

The provision of the law has put the CHR in a quandary over its bases in making decisions because the law has no implementing rules. What complicates the situation, Alonzo said, is that CHR will be prosecuting the police found violating human rights.

“This is one thing that we would be discussing in Manila; this will make the CHR a quasi-judicial body and then we do not even know what guidelines we have to follow when we implement this because this is very important,” Alonzo said.

Alonzo said the regional office is still waiting for the guidelines to be issued by the CHR-central office on matters of enforcing the law but he shared the apprehensions of human rights groups over possible abuses of authorities due to the law’s lack of implementing rules and regulations (IRR).

Alonzo said there are provisions of the law that do not look good to the CHR, such as the one that allows law enforcers to wiretap conversations of people suspected as terrorists.

He cited another provision that allows a three-day detention of suspects even without being charged in court.

This anti-terrorism law will take effect this July 15, Sunday, and President Gloria Arroyo had already said that it is self-implementing thus the IRR is no longer necessary.

Arroyo had said the law would “bolster the government’s drive to protect from terrorism life, liberty and property in the country,” and criminalizes terrorist’s acts that threaten the country’s security.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines however warned of “widespread panic” from the people who fear now of possible indiscriminate identification of anybody as terrorist.

CBCP president, Jaro Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, said that many lawyers find the definition of terrorism in the law as “broad and dangerous,” so he urged the government to review first the law’s provisions before implementing them.

The Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas, a cause-oriented group, backed CBCP’s call for “thorough review” of RA 9372, which it condemned as “a recipe for undeclared martial law.”

The group’s national chair Fernando Hicap said the law “is a wholesale threat against human rights and civil liberties” that leave the people at the mercy of the criminal and bankrupt regime of President Arroyo and the sadistic National Security cluster in Malacañang.”

Hicap said. “The CBCP’s divine intervention in the fight against the US-Arroyo partnership of terror is necessary, politically correct and morally upright,”  — Fred P. Languido and Gerome M. Dalipe/RAE