On profiling of sectoral groups

OVER THE PAST month, activists and members of Bayan Panay, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), Alliance of Health Workers (AHW), Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (PAMALAKAYA) and Katilingban sang Imol sa Syudad (KAISOG) in Iloilo City, and in the provinces of Iloilo, Capiz and Aklan became the subject of intensified surveillance and profiling activities by suspected intelligence operatives from the Philippine National Police.

Most recently, these operatives went to the barangays where the said activists resided and asked the local officials for information on their political activities and membership in progressive organizations and cause-oriented groups.

A document addressed to barangay officials in the district of Arevalo in Iloilo City further revealed that the PNP was also requesting for information on the presence of “sectoral groups” in their areas, including the names of the members of such groups.

KARAPATAN strongly condemns these incidents of surveillance and police-profiling. The mandate of the PNP is law enforcement and the prevention and investigation of criminal activity. For it to target individuals on the basis of political activity and affiliation is highly objectionable and patently unconstitutional.

Coupled with the incessant red-tagging of various cause-oriented organizations by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, these government agencies have only exposed themselves as instruments for the persecution of social activists who have merely voiced their valid and just criticisms of the murderous policies of the Duterte administration.

The freedom to form and join organizations is protected by no less than the Bill of Rights which is enshrined in our 1987 Constitution. This freedom extends not merely to groups that carry advocacies which the government finds palatable but, more importantly, for those who have the courage to question and oppose the policies of the governments that brings havoc to the lives of its own citizens.

Without this freedom to oppose and criticize official policies, democracy dies.

Without this freedom to voice the people’s sentiments, the so-called freedom of association becomes nothing more than a hollow right, utterly devoid of social value, leaving this country stuck only with groups whose members goose-step to the beat of government orders.

Thus, freedom of association, as guaranteed by our Constitution, is intended to protect groups that advocate for social change or espouse ideas deemed critical of the status quo. Stated otherwise, this constitutional guarantee is there for groups that dare to speak out against government abuse, injustices, and social ills, even if, or more precisely because, they are unacceptable to those who are in power. Without this constitutional guarantee, authoritarianism will be the order of things.

Along with free speech and freedom of the press, freedom of association serves as a check against state abuses and ensures that society continues to advance with the development and propagation of new ideas. Stagnation is the death of progress; and the suppression of ideas begets nothing but stagnation in a time when our countrymen wallows in poverty.

Moreover, every individual is entitled to privacy both in his personal and social life. This right to privacy bars the government, or any public official for that matter, from unduly interfering in the affairs of its citizens, prying into their records, and demanding information about their activities and affiliations.

Every person enjoys protection from such scrutiny, even if – and especially if – it is being done under the guise of “safeguarding national security.” Throughout history, these choice words have been thrown around to justify the persecution of political opposition, minorities, and activists. Our own experiences, as a nation, have taught us that the freedom to dissent is a most precious one, easily and often transgressed in the name of “national security”. Many of us are witnesses to periods in our history when we casually turned a blind eye to seemingly “trivial” restrictions to our rights, upon the assurance of government that these were in place merely for the public’s safety, only then to wake up and discover that liberty had been replaced by tyranny.

Fortunately, we learned from those experiences. Thus, our most important freedoms – including freedom of association and the right to privacy – are assured and guaranteed by the Constitution, precisely, because they are the most fragile. With the vast arsenal of governmental powers, the Bill of Rights in our Constitution acts as the limitation to these powers and no public official – not a police officer, the PNP Director, or even the President – can deny us this constitutionally protected rights. Our fundamental rights are, after all, written into the Constitution for times like these – when the government is hell-bent in stifling dissent through coercion and fear.

Still, unless they are invoked and demanded, we risk losing these rights to an administration that has gained a reputation for its utter disregard for human life. For more than three years under President Duterte, we have been facing considerable government intrusions into constitutionally-protected spheres of liberty and all of it, once again, in the name of “national security”.

As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the AFP has the habit of labeling cause-oriented groups and progressive party-list organizations, as fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army in order to silence them. It has branded activists and human rights advocates as “terrorists” and subjected them to surveillance and harassment.

In many instances, the red-tagging perpetrated by the AFP preceded the actual killing or detention of these individuals, or the filing of absurd criminal charges in court. And in the wake of the government’s counter-insurgency campaign, we have seen a bloody wave of human rights abuses and violations of due process of defenseless citizens.

Now, in Panay Island, the PNP’s machinery is being utilized to monitor organizations red-tagged by the AFP. The recent spate of killings in military-controlled Negros, which was also heralded by the red-tagging of the very same organizations currently being monitored by the PNP, should serve as a warning that we are a stone’s throw away from facing a similar magnitude of attacks against our liberty and security. In this regard, the PNP’s efforts must be met by condemnation and vigilance, for anything less only invites oppression and abuse of power.

The curtailment of dissent is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes; and profiling individuals based on political affiliations, maintaining dossiers on activists, and branding progressive organizations as “enemies of the state” are devices of desperate security forces who want to intimidate into submission citizens who aspire for social change.

If members of the PNP wish to act like the Nazi Gestapo, instead of the law-enforcers they were intended to be, they do so at the risk of stoking the public’s outrage and losing, whatever may be left of, the good will reposed upon the institution to which they belong.

They must realize that by conducting these surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that target members of civil society and progressive organizations, the PNP is not only trampling on the constitutional rights of the people they have sworn to protect.

But more than that, the PNP, in the final analysis, is blatantly violating our Constitution, the very Constitution that they have sworn to uphold. For that, the public’s outrage would be more than justified. – ATTY. MARLON LEGURPA, chairperson, Karaptan-Panay <bayanpanay2014@gmail.com>