ASSOCIATE JUSTICE DISAGREES

SC petitioner argues anti-terror law can be used to penalize dissent

Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Ramon Paul Hernando said Tuesday the controversial anti-terror law does not penalize dissent unless the protesters go on a rampage.

Hernando took the position as he grilled former Bayan Muna Congressman Neri Colmenares, one of the counsels for the petitioners, at the resumption of the oral arguments on the petitions seeking to invalidate the law.

Section 4 of the measure exempts "advocacy, protest, dissent, stoppage of work, industrial or mass action, and other similar exercises of civil and political rights" from the definition of terrorism, but with the caveat: "which are not intended to cause death or serious physical harm to a person, to endanger a person's life, or to create a serious risk to public safety."

“We allege that the purpose is to actually include dissent and chill people from dissenting because the moment you exercise your civil and political rights we can impute intention of harm to you and you can be detained for 24 days, which is a punishment in itself,” Colmenares said.

“I don't know if the Congress intended this, but they actually admitted in the law that the exercise of civil and political rights can become a terrorist act. Instead of a safeguard, Your Honor, they expressly included that.”

Hernando disagreed with Colmenares’ interpretation, saying the law expressly excluded dissent, protest, and advocacy from acts that constitute terrorism.

“I don’t think it should be construed that way because the proviso uses the word ‘not.’ So, it’s exclusive, not inclusive,” Hernando said.

“That’s a warning to a law enforcer that he should not interfere with [a] group’s advocacy, dissent, et cetera, except when the law enforcer would see that the act transitions into something more sinister like already setting on fire the houses, killing people, et cetera.”

Colmenares, however, insisted that the provision was problematic.

“The fact that it can be used against people setting fire and it can be used against people not setting fires, that’s the problem with this law, Your Honor,” he said.

The petitioners earlier said the absence of standards gives law enforcement wide discretion to determine whether advocacy, protest, and mass actions are intended to cause death or harm to a person, among others, as defined by the law. — DVM, GMA News