Gov’t designation of terrorists ‘brazenly arbitrary’ —Karapatan

The Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC)’s designation of several individuals as terrorists is “brazenly arbitrary” and sets a “very perilous precedent,” human rights group Karapatan said Thursday.

Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay pointed out that 11 of the 19 individuals designated as terrorists by the ATC are peace consultants and two are peace panel members of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).

Karapatan said the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees states that peace consultants and peace panel members should be “spared from arrests, detention, and harassment.”

Palabay said the ATC is “wasting no time in exercising their arbitrary powers despite the fact that the oral arguments on the petitions seeking to junk [President Rodrigo] Duterte’s terror law are still ongoing in the Supreme Court.”

“This sets a very perilous precedent on the worsening crackdown on dissent in the country, especially when being tagged as terrorist is effectively a death warrant in itself,” she added.

Karapatan recalled that its slain human rights worker Zara Alvarez and peace consultants Randy Malayo and Randall Echanis were among hundreds of people that the Justice Department sought to label as terrorists in 2018.

“The ATC’s designation list is a virtual hit list, and we fear that there are more names and lists to come,” Palabay said, urging the high court to declare the controversial Anti-Terrorism Act unconstitutional or issue a temporary restraining order against it.

Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. also stressed that the designation of individuals as terrorists without due process is a violation of human rights.

The ATC had accused the individuals on its list of engaging in the “planning, preparing, facilitating, conspiring, and inciting the commission of terrorism and recruitment to and membership in a terrorist organization.”

“The designation is arbitrary, has no clear standards, with no evidence presented and no specific terrorist acts cited. It is just a sweeping accusation, no different from red-tagging, that violates the rights of those designated,” Reyes said.

“The same can easily be done against anyone disliked by the regime or whom the regime wishes to silence,” he warned.

National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. and Assistant Solicitor General Marissa dela Cruz-Galandines earlier maintained that the Anti-Terrorism Act would not be used for red-tagging or linking individuals or groups to communists.—AOL, GMA News