(Updated) The Duterte administration has been pushing for the amendments of Human Security Act (HSA) of 2007 into the anti-terrorism bill. Key officials in President Rodrigo Duterte’s Cabinet such as the secretaries of Interior and Local Government Eduardo Año and National Defense Delfin Lorenzana and National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon – former top officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines – have been vocal in their support for amending HSA.
In October 2019, Esperon said another martial law of the then-almost two-year old Martial Law in Mindanao is no longer needed if Congress will be able to pass measures to amend HSA. The HSA gave law enforcement and judicial authorities the legal instruments to combat terror threats in the country, but was seen as a weak law by the supporters and proponents to amending the law.
Esperon described the HSA as not “user-friendly.” The amended HSA could become a better tool for them than Martial Law in their anti-terrorism and their anti-insurgency campaign, the latter for which the current moves to amend the law appeared to be directed.
Esperon said that even Martial Law in Mindanao has limitations, as they had to get Congress approval for that.
HSA has been criticized for being ineffective or useless because of provisions penalizing law enforcers with the payment of P500,000 in damages per day of detention of any person acquitted of terrorism charges.
In February this year, defense and military officials welcomed the passage of Senate Bill No. 1083, or the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, sponsored by Senator Panfilo Lacson, which sought to repeal HSA. Lacson himself deemed HSA ineffective and the anti-terrorism bill to replace it is thought to be a “strong legal backbone to support the country’s criminal justice response to terrorism.”
One of the amendments from the current Human Security Act of 2007 to the proposed anti-terrorism bill’ is that it removed the payment of P500,000 in damages per day of detention to a person acquitted of terrorism charges.
Other proposed amendments included longer detention and extendable period of detention on warrantless arrests, longer surveillance period, long period of ‘temporary’ proscription of terrorist groups or individuals so they can be legally arrested or placed under surveillance without warrant, inclusion of individuals as terrorists (possibly carrying out, inciting to terrorist acts) and threatens providing support or mere association with members of tagged terrorist groups, possibly activist groups or red-tagged groups or individuals as the government has tried before to get the court to tag some of them as terrorists.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has already tried before to proscribe as terrorists 649 individuals including a UN Special Rapporteur, internationally acclaimed environmentalist, journalists and civilians. The petition was filed with the Manila Trial Court, who struck off names of persons from the list including known activists and peace consultants Satur Ocampo and Rafael Baylosis. By January 2019, the DOJ would pare down the list to only eight people those they wanted to tag as terrorists.
The anti-terrorism bill also provided a smaller role of the judiciary in place of an anti-terrorism council shall be composed of people already taking part in counterinsurgency activities in the country, many of which has been linked to political killings even massacres, illegal arrests and detention, aerial bombings, etc. Tagging terrorists may no longer need to go through the court, and may be determined by the anti-terrorism council and it does not need a proscription but may be given a “preliminary order of proscription.”
Critics of HSA has described the law as draconian and fascist, and does not cover the acts of terrorism of the State itself which they say is the worst kind of terrorism. Even in the HSA, presumption of innocence has already been undermined.
In the government’s June 1 pandemic response public briefing, Año said the anti-terrorism bill is “very timely so if we return to the new normal, we would already have a law to be enforced and we would no longer have terrorism as a problem.”
Many questioned how the anti-terrorism bill is timely during the time of pandemic, if not to clamp down on critics as the government did using the COVID-19 lockdown or to curtail protests or widespread dissent following the ‘failing’ pandemic response of the government after 77 days of lockdown and the cases continue to rise amid a grave economic downturn following the lockdown. Positive cases have exceeded more than 1/3 of what the government reported daily as confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Around 6pm on June 3, the Lower House of Congress approved the anti-terrorism bill on third and final reading.
