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“He had been awaiting his next hearing in June 2019 for possible dismissal of the rest, for failure to prosecute.”

By ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Another political prisoner has succumbed to illness. Franco “Pangkoy” Romeroso, 38, passed away on Good Friday, April 19.

Romeroso was a political prisoner at the Batangas Provincial Jail. According to Karapatan, he died of stroke while being confined in a hospital in Batangas City. He was brought to the hospital for treatment of his tuberculosis and diabetes mellitus.

Romeroso was among the 43 health workers, called the Morong 43, who were arrested during a training in Morong, Rizal on Feb. 2010. They were released 10 months after their detention due to the massive campaign, local and international, for their release.

However, Romeroso was again arrested on March 27 in Ternata, Cavite, on trumped up charges according to Karapatan.

His lawyers from the Public Interest Law Center also expressed their condolences to Romeroso’s family.

“With heavy hearts we send our condolences to the family of our client Franco Romeroso, victim of vicious state repression. He faced several ridiculous cases in Nasugbu, some of which had been already dismissed,” the group said in a statement.

“He had been awaiting his next hearing in June 2019 for possible dismissal of the rest, for failure to prosecute,” they added.

Romeroso is the fourth political prisoner who died under the Duterte administration.

Karapatan said there are already 548 political prisoners in the Philippines as of March 30 this year. At least 225 of them were arrested under Duterte.

“Political prisoners are individuals who were illegally or arbitrarily arrested by State actors based on trumped up charges due to their political beliefs or their activism. Aside from the unjust bases for their detention, they suffer under difficult and inhumane conditions in jail,” Karapatan explained.

The PILC also said, “May by his passion and death remind us of continuing injustice, and strengthen our spirits in the struggle.”

Meanwhile, Romeroso’s family is appealing for support for his funeral services. (Click here for details or to send help.)

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“If the government doesn’t want us to give services to victims of human rights violations, that is no justification to open us to attacks.”

Read also: ‘Duterte acting treasonous on his vetted matrix from a foreign intelligence’ — Neri Colmenares

BY MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — The matrix of personalities behind a purported “oust Duterte” plot allegedly involving lawyers and journalists is clearly a lie that Malacañang knows cannot stand in court, the leaders of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) said in a press conference in Quezon City today.

Bayan Muna partylist Rep. Carlos Zarate said this matrix would’ve been funny except that the bombshell, as Malacañang calls it, is a declaration that it is open season to even more grievous rights violations. The so-called bombshell is “disturbing” because it shows there is no letup in threats against journalists and lawyers, Rep. Zarate said at the press conference.

He explained that although the matrix could not be relied upon in court, as in fact Malacañang itself yesterday confirmed that they will not file a case in relation to their matrix, “it is designed to stop us from practicing our profession,” Zarate said. Bayan Muna Partylist Representative Zarate is both a lawyer and a former journalist.

The NUPL is one of the first organizations in the country that called attention to the Duterte regime’s tokhang operations. They issued their first policy statement in defense of human rights of the ‘suspects’ being targeted in tokhang as early as July 4, 2016. At the time, although Duterte himself has been in Malacañang for only four days, his declaration of war on drugs have preceded his inauguration.

Recently, the Makabayan coalition that includes Bayan Muna  filed a case  against the Chico River loan agreement with China. Right after the press conference, its lawyers conferred about the consumer rights likely being violated by the Manila Water and Sewerage System (MWSS) and Manila Water in the ongoing water interruption.

The NUPL has also filed for a writ of amparo with the Supreme Court over a week ago in response to threats coming from the Philippine military over the lawyers’ defense of activists and mass leaders.

“If the government doesn’t want us to give services to victims of human rights violations, that is no justification to open us to attacks,” said human rights lawyer and Senatorial candidate Neri Colmenares.

In the Philippines, it has been an observable trend, said the NUPL, that if you’re an activist, a dissenter, a critic, an oppositionist, you are vilified as an alleged terrorist, or as a communist. Unfortunately what followed the “disinfomation” are human rights violations such as filing of trumped up cases, illegal arrests, surveillance and harassment, or worse, extra-judicial killing.

Warding off the chilling effect of the ‘phantom’ matrix

Bayan Muna Rep. Zarate said Malacañang’s spokesman Salvador Panelo may act like a court jester asking the media and consequently the public to “just believe” an undocumented, unverified document — just because it came from the President. “But they are weaponizing this to send a clear message,” Zarate said.

Its chilling effect in all likelihood will not deter the lawyers and the journalists allegedly involved. They will continue serving their clients – the critics, dissenters and the masses aggrieved and victimized by the Duterte government’s pet projects. The journalists would likely continue with their investigative reports.

“It’s more addressed to Duterte’s supporters, and to the other media groups lately becoming more critical of President Duterte’s policies and decisions,” Zarate explained. “The real message is, ‘Be quiet or else it will be your name on the list next time.’”

The people’s lawyers said the people really have to condemn “this assault on democratic practices.”

They described Panelo and Duterte as “a disgrace to the law profession” as the two blithely swept aside legal processes and verification.

Cases to be filed

Lawyer Edwin dela Cruz of the NUPL draws his own matrix comparing Duterte’s make-believe plots to Marcos’ so-called left-right conspiracy and bogus assassination attempt on former Defense Sec. Juan Ponce Enrile in the 70s.

Marcos had used the unverified left-right conspiracy and Enrile slay try as his pretext for declaring Martial Law, Dela Cruz said. The similarity is worrying because President Duterte has issued various announcements alluding to his desire to declare martial law, or a “revolutionary” government with Martial Law powers. This, as opposition to his loan agreements with China, economic impositions to the masses such as higher taxes (TRAIN law) amid the lowest job generation ever, are threatening his government with greater peoples protests

If not to be a pretext for further curtailment of people’s rights to speak and protest, the dubious matrix, said Bayan Muna Zarate, has to be opposed by everyone because, as of this writing, this has also served like a smokescreen for Duterte.

“It is saddening, and we should all counter this,” Zarate said. “Everyone is talking about the matrix when the country has a lot of problems which we should all be discussing now instead of this supposed plot. It’s like a smokescreen for the real issues of the day.”

What is tragic here, Zarate added, is that the Duterte camp is doing its best to bring electoral victory to its senatorial candidates who he said won’t even discuss the real issues of the day and instead are just singing and dancing onstage. He urged the public to resist this “diversionary tactic,” to oppose the fear-mongering and attacks on human rights, and to delve deeply again to the real issues of the day.  Among others, these issues include livelihood concerns and worsening poverty. “That’s the undeniable situation everyone is feeling more acutely these days.” 

The post ‘Malacañang’s fake matrix a dodgy smokescreen for Duterte regime’s many sins’ – NUPL appeared first on Bulatlat.

“Why is the president putting much more store into this foreign intelligence body than that of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) which denied there was such an Oust Duterte plot?”

By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – Among the cascade of violations of the law that President Rodrigo Duterte may have committed over the last few weeks, the manner with which he got hold of the white paper on alleged Oust Duterte plotters represents a big example. During a press conference in Quezon City today by the National Union of People’s Lawyer (NUPL), the lawyers’ group Duterte has vilified on a Manila Times headline story and on subsequent press briefing in Malacañang, the lawyers warned that the President is committing treason, among others.

At the press briefing in Malacañang the day before, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo told the media to believe the matrix document just because it came from the president. The matrix, according to President Duterte himself, was provided to him by a foreign intelligence body. The matrix illustrates the supposed flow of Oust Duterte information from the NUPL to journalists.

“Panelo made a worse statement a spokesperson could have made,” said Bayan Muna and NUPL chairperson Neri Colmenares.

But who is this “foreign intelligence body” that’s apparently conducting some surveillance on lawyers and journalists? Why is the president putting much more store into this foreign intelligence body than that of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) which denied there was such an Oust Duterte plot?

If President Duterte was indeed listening to and basing his actions on reports of this unidentified foreign intelligence body, then he is committing many violations, Colmenares said. At most, he explained, Duterte is acting treasonous in relying on reports that came from a foreign surveillance body especially if in following this, Duterte will end up suppressing dissenters.

In having conducted a surveillance, this foreign intelligence body may have violated Repubic Act No. 4200 or Anti-Wiretapping Law, the Data Privacy Act or Republic Act 10173  and other civil code provisions, Colmenares said.

He mentioned that there is also a requirement to register foreign agents operating in the Philippines.

Colmenares said President Duterte, “at the very least, was very gullible” to put that much store in a foreign intelligence report. Presidential Spokesperson Panelo had tried to assuage doubts about the matrix saying the foreign intelligence report has been “vetted”, but Colmenares said, that’s the same thing they said about the questionable China loan agreement in Kaliwa Dam and Chico River project.

According to Colmenares and the other officers of NUPL, their work serving the marginalized and oppressed sectors – farmers, workers, fisherfolk, urban poor, women, youth – “has no bearing on the popularity or not of the president.”

He warned also about the possible hidden agenda of this “foreign intelligence body.” The lawyers in NUPL have also been party to cases questioning both Chinese and US military encroachments into the Philippine territory. The US has official and unofficial military bases and installations in the country, and they have been known and heard to be supplying intelligence data to the Philippine government; the Chinese, meanwhile, are expanding military installations by occupying and reclaiming parts of the West Philippine Sea. Aside from the two, the Philippines has a military agreement with Australia. Duterte has yet to identify the foreign source of his intelligence report.

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A massive earthquake struck parts of Central Luzon and the National Capital region, the former emplaces Castillejos, Zambales as the epicenter, 6.1, and 5.7. Porac, a town in the neighboring province of Pampanga has been so far reported to have the most number of human casualties and damages. My family lives a few towns away from Porac; and while none of them is physically harmed, I am certain trauma from this disaster is consumes as it did during the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption.

From overseas, my thoughts are with my family and more especially with the people of Porac, our field site for as long as I have worked at the UP Center for International Studies.

Anthropologist Cynthia N. Zayas (Chim) and botanist Elena Mencias Ragragio have spearheaded an inter-disciplinary project; and along with activist scholars Aya Ragragio and Jef Mancera, I have come to learn about the Aeta’s (an indigenous group in Central Luzon) experience of disaster and resource management strategies through this endeavor, which took place in 2012 and has since continued under Chim’s watch. Chim has informed us that our good friends, a group of Aetas, are currently stranded in a remote town in Zamables as they try to find their way out of the area.

Classes are now suspended in Metro Manila. What I find really striking is an earlier conversation I had with my dear colleagues at the Center for International Studies (Center). They are concerned about resuming office in our building—Benton Hall. It has long been condemned. Yet we willfully dwell in it as our workplace. We do this within the fatal context of austerity measures inflicted by government leaders upon public institutions. Certainly, we are not the hardest-hit in this latest disaster. Yet, we share with those who are the primary factor for poor disaster preparedness and management: government’s capitulation to neoliberal dictates.

This is not something unique in the Philippines but a shared experience among peoples in the Global South. Sadly, leaders of public institutions have prioritized their roles as “managers” who need to kowtow to state dictates, lest they lose their official appointments. Whenever we say “we do not expect public officials to “rock the boat,” we also mean, among other things, that we have been used to these “managers” approaching public service as personal careers. The killings and political vilification of mass organizations in Porac, Pampanga and in places like Clark Air Base, which push back against extractive industries have been well publicized in the last seven years.

Meanwhile, austerity measures in the National University are discussed in a manner that is hush-hush as we do not want to upset university managers who are responsible for allocating funds and determining tenure and promotions. Frankly, this sort of reflection on disaster is dismissed as a mode of “unnecessarily politicizing” instead of coming together for a charity drive. That is most untrue. For those who are most vocal on this issue of mismanagement of public funds have also been the most active in disaster response. I can cite the work of the Union in the UP System as an entity that does the groundwork in terms of pooling and redistributing funds and other resources to regions affected by disasters, the same entity that will not cower in hammering a critique of neoliberalism. These two modes of intervention should go hand in hand— immediate relief and consciousness raising through a tough and thoughtful structural critique.

This intervention may be viewed improper by some quarters in the University. Perhaps some may be of the opinion that as the current director of the Center, I should have relayed this critique and appeal for ensuring safety in Benton Hall “thru channels.” I disagree as I will never find reason nor pleasure in self-ingratiation, certainly not when our former head, retired professor Cynthia Zayas has already made an official request for the UP Administration to pay attention and the structural integrity of Benton Hall (which houses several other units such as the Diliman Gender Office and the Office for Anti-Sexual Harassment) many years ago.

Having tackled a not-so rosy aspect of our University, a view that may not be shared by other colleagues on account of uneven funding resulting in unequal development in the disciplines, I must emphasize that a way forward is an honest recognition the global connection that shapes our experience of disasters. It is not by accident or a matter of racial superiority that rich countries have the technologies for disaster preparedness and management such as early warning signs, sturdy infrastructures. The resources at their disposal are proof of unequal development of nations as a direct result of imperialist plunder of resources and exploitation of cheap labor in the Global South by the Global North’s oligarchy. Imperialist plunder accounts for the stark differences in welfare, well-being and chances of survival people in this political-economic and spatial divide under global capitalism.

In a thoughtful and provocative chapter “Apocalypse at the Gates” of the book “Living in the End Times,” philosopher Slavoj Zizek tackles the debates and contradictions around the discourses on ecological catastrophe. In the main, Zizek argues against the dominant consensus, which he labels as “commonsense reasoning” among environmentalists, ecologists, and practically all state apparatuses asserting that regardless of our class position or political orientation, we will have to confront the ecological crisis if we are to survive.

Here, Zizek rightly positions ecological catastrophe as a “universal problem of the survival of the human species(334).” And the only way to solve this is to deal with the particular antagonism, which is none other than the “deadlock within the capitalist mode of production (334).” The commonsense reasoning about the end of the world or the impending ecological catastrophe is belied by hurricanes such as Katrina, Harvey in the U.S., Maria in Puerto Rico, and Sendong and Yolanda in the Philippines. Those disasters clearly show the interplay of imperialism, colonialism, bureaucrat capitalism and social inequality affecting the survival of poor and laboring people in those respective areas.

That commonsense reasoning, characteristic of the radical libertarian approach to the ecological crisis, knows no social division in its call to save planet Earth. It espouses the universal and elides the particular precisely to erase the “not all” or the classes which fall away from the false universality of liberal capitalism.

There is definitely room for division precisely at this time. On the local level, this division can only be between a government mired in corruption and capitulation and the rest of us. In an ideal movement for social transformation that will be responsive to calls for immediate relief and long term planning for disasters, leaders of public institutions like state universities have a great capacity to play key roles in times of social disasters as they have done so at crucial points in history as well as in important campaigns in the recent past, from the Marcos dictatorship to corrupt public leaders, from anti-war movements to a defense of human rights.

Sarah Raymundo teaches at the University of the Philippine Diliman-Center for International Studies. She is the Chairperson of the Philippines-Venezuela Bolivarian Friendship Association. She also chairs the International Committee of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT). She is also the External Vice Chair of the Philippine Anti-Imperialist Studies (PAIS) and a member of the Editorial Board of Interface: A Journal for Social Movements.

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