TERROR LAW IS NOT THE SOLUTION

We sympathize with Gracia Burnham, Cynthia Filipinas, Mike Calabang and all other relatives of victims of terrorism.  They have all the reasons in the world to speak up and condemn terrorism.  As a direct service organization providing psycho-social help to children victims of violence, we know how the victims and their families suffer psychologically and emotionally, especially with the violent death or sudden enforced disappearance of their loved one.  Like Gracia, many wives have lost their husbands with a spray of bullets and now face their future with uncertainty.  Like Cynthia, mothers weep for their children whose childhoods were abruptly ended by deafening explosions. The only difference is that in the cases we handle, such acts of terrorism were done by the very same persons who were supposed to protect them from terrorism.

For more than twenty years, we have been helping families cope with the effects of illegal arrests, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, etc. done by the military, police and other government agents as they pursue their total war, all-out war or war of terror, all in the name of counter-insurgency to protect the state.  In these twenty years, very few have found justice for their loved ones.  Unfortunately, human rights violations continue and have even worsened to include children as targets.  Since last year we have monitored about twenty (20) cases of arrests, torture and murder of children who are alleged “child soldiers”.

Thus, while we are definitely one with Gracia, Cynthia and Mike, in their hope that “no other parents…suffer against (sic) terrorism”, we have to disagree that the Human Security Act (HSA) is the solution.  Countless incidents have shown that even without the Human Security Act, human rights violations have been committed by the government.   How much more with the implementation of such ambivalent, much maligned law that will be carried out by an institution that has repeatedly failed to give justice for victims of past abuses?

 Even children have not escaped such terror.  Since last year, many have been arrested, tortured and killed for being alleged “child soldiers”.  With the HSA, we expect such cases to multiply a hundredfold.

We call on ordinary citizens, even the victims of terrorism themselves, to oppose the Human Security Act.  It denigrates our rights that should be guaranteed under the constitution.  The HSA does not guarantee the end of terrorism, it essentially ensures the death of democracy.