Achieving Happiness

What’s the current status of the peace talks? The answer will depend on whom is asked. It’s a very good development that there is continued interest in the talks — despite the Macapagal-Arroyo government’s declarations that there is no more need to talk kasi wala namang pag-uusapan.

In the wake of the military’s admission that it has failed (and how) to meet its target of moving sufficiently closer to putting an end to the insurgency, dapat tuunan na muli ng pansin ang kasalukuyang kalagayan ng usapang pangkapayapaan. Contrary to cynical beliefs that the peace talks count for nothing, they actually imply a lot for human rights and the country’s prospects for peace.

The formal meetings of the negotiating panels of the
Government of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP are postponed, but the NDFP
maintains that the peace negotiations are ongoing. The NDFP affirms that all agreements signed
with the
GRP remain binding and in effect. The Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC)
which was established in February 14, 2004 on the strength of the signing of
the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International
Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) between the two parties back in 1998 continues to
function. The same goes for the Reciprocal Working Committees (RWCs) on human
rights and international humanitarian law, and on social and economic affairs.
 Prior to the break in the formal meetings, there have been
several developments that compelled the NDFP to charge the GRP of negotiating
in bad faith.

 In July 7, 2004, upon learning that the entire Marcos
ill-gotten wealth held in escrow by the Philippine National Bank had been
transferred to the GRP treasury the previous March, the NDFP strongly
criticized and opposed the move. This was on the grounds that a significant
portion of the amount was supposed to be earmarked for the indemnification of
the human rights victims of the dictatorship, and that this was already agreed
upon in the Oslo I and II joint statements.

The NDFP also raised the issue of the release of the
political prisoners, the worsening and increasing number of violations of human
rights and international humanitarian law, and the GRP’s failure to resolve the
issue of the ‘terrorist’ listing of the
Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), New People’s Army (NPA) and the NDFP
Chief Political Consultant, Prof. Jose Ma. Sison. The NDFP considers these
issues as prejudicial questions that should be settled before formal
negotiations can resume.

 To further compound complications, the US State Department
released a new list of foreign terrorist organizations and individuals on
August 10, 2004. The list still included
the CPP, NPA and Prof. Sison. These two events prompted the NDFP negotiating
panel to postpone the formal talks that should have taken place on August 24.
The postponement was a move to give the GRP time to comply with its obligations
in accordance with The Hague Joint Declaration, the Joint Agreement on Safety
and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG), CARHRIHL and Oslo Joint Statements I and
II.

 Instead of using the period of postponement to address the
prejudicial questions raised by the NDFP, the GRP on December 18, 2004 formally
suspended the formal talks in the negotiations. On August 4 the following year,
it also unilaterally suspended the JASIG. The so-called JASIG suspension
essentially put the peace negotiations in limbo. The NDFP maintains that the
JASIG remains valid and binding, and that the peace negotiations are ongoing
because neither of the negotiating parties has terminated the JASIG.

 For its part, the NDFP has done its best to break the
impasse and to ensure that the peace talks continue. The NDFP has also
submitted proposals for this purpose, among them are the paper titled
Responding to Prejudicial Questions, Accelerating Peace Negotiations through Informal Meetings
of Special Representatives of the Principals (June 2005); the 10-point Concise
Agreement for an Immediate Ceasefire (August 27, 2005); and the NDFP Package of
Proposals (November 2005).

Instead of meeting the efforts of the NDFP halfway, the GRP
virtually suspended the peace negotiations when, in February 2006, it filed
rebellion charges against Prof. Sison, NDFP Panel Chairman Luis Jalandoni; NDFP
Panel members Fidel Agcaoili and Juliet Sison; NDFP Panel consultants Vicente
Ladlad, Rafael Baylosis, and Randall Echanis,
among others. The GRP’s Department of Justice has also attacked the integrity
of the Joint Secretariat by identifying its office as the address of the
individuals it charged with rebellion.

 Prof. Sison has said that there are clear signs that
indicate the GRP’s lack of interest in the peace negotiations. He cited the
extrajudicial killings, abductions, torture, forced displacement of millions of
people and other human rights violations by the GRP military, police and death
squads.

 In the meantime, there have been numerous public declarations
by key cabinet officials such as Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, National
Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales and AFP chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes
Esperon taunting the NDFP to surrender and yield to a three-year ceasefire.
This is a clear violation of the Hague Joint Declaration wherein it was agreed
that ceasefires will be the fourth and last substantive agenda in the peace
negotiations.

 The NDFP also denounces how the GRP continues to spread the
lie that the NDFP is demanding that the former compel the United States and other
foreign governments remove the CPP, the NPA and Prof. Sison from the terrorist
list. There is no truth to this accusation. All the NDFP is seeking is, at the
minimum, both parties make a joint statement against the terrorist listing of
the aforementioned.

 As for recent political developments, the NDFP has taken a
strong stand opposing and condemning the anti-terrorism law.

 On February 8 this year, Congress voted 16-2 to approve the
Human Security Act, more commonly known as the anti-terrorism law. The
following day, February 9, the congressional bicameral committee adapted the
senate’s version in toto. By March 6,
2007, the anti-terrorism bill was signed into law.

 Advocates of the anti-terror law – mostly from the Armed
Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the National Security Council (NSC) and the
Department of National Defense (DND) – justify it as a means to effectively
fight against the scourge of terrorism. Analyzed within the context of the intensifying attacks of the government
against members of the political opposition including the legal and democratic
protest movement and the progressive party-lists, however, it is impossible not
to see through the more insidious motives. Prior to the ATA’s implementation on July 15, 2007, human rights group
KARAPATAN has documented 866 acts of extrajudicial killings and 200 enforced
disappearances. These shocking numbers
are feared to increase as the ATA gains ground and the law-enforcement agencies
implement it.

 The ant-terror law’s provisions on the prosecution of
organizations opposing the government also puts legal people’s organizations
and their civilian members in danger. The GRP has repeatedly charged a number
of legitimate people’s organizations as fronts for the CPP-NPA, and this too
can be used against the NDFP and to the detriment of the peace talks.

 In the meantime, the anti-terror law is also in open
violation of the CARHRIHL, wherein it is stated that essentially, the GRP shall not invoke repressive laws,
decrees and orders to circumvent or contravene the provisions of the agreement.

 Currently the NDFP-Monitoring Committee (MC) is busy
addressing the matter of the Macapagal-Arroyo government’s escalating
underhanded attacks against the leadership of the NDFP, which included the
arrest of NDFP chief political consultant Prof. Jose Ma. Sison.

Last August 28, the Dutch
police raided the office of the NDFP in The Netherlands, as well as the houses
of Luis Jalandoni and NDFP Panel member Coni Ledesma; Juliet de Lima; Danilo
Borjal, Political Consultant; Ruth de Leon, Head Panel Secretariat; and Aldo
Gonzalez and Joselito Baleva, volunteers in the NDFP International Information
Office. They were brusquely interrogated and forbidden from moving around their
homes while the rest of the premises were being ransacked. Ms. Ledesma was even taken to the police
station for questioning.

All computers, laptops, external disks, USB sticks, CDs,
diskettes, cameras and MP3s players were seized, along with voluminous
documents and papers including Mr. Jalandoni’s complete files on the GRP-NDFP
peace negotiations from 1986 to the end of 2004.

In the meantime, the room that Mr. Agcaoili uses whenever he
is in The Netherlands was also broken into, ransacked, and its contents
pillaged. Included in the confiscated
documents were the complete set of complaint forms submitted to the JMC against
the NDFP and the GRP, as well as written communications between the NDFP-MC and
the NDFP Joint Secretariat (JS), and documents of the NDFP-MC. A box of diskettes and CDs containing
documents pertaining to the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations and the work of the JMC
were also taken.

It goes without saying that the actions of the Dutch police
have greatly disrupted the operations of the NDFP-MC, and have caused great
inconvenience in our work, not to mention compromising efforts to secure
justice for the thousands of human rights victims who have placed their trust
in the mechanism of the NDFP-MC for the redress of their grievances.

All the seized digital files — computers, laptops, external
disks, diskettes, USB sticks, CDs, cameras and MP3s — documents and papers have no connection
whatsoever to the charge against Prof. Sison. Sison himself was released last September 13 after the Dutch District
Court in the Hague declared that there was no
sufficient and credible evidence connecting him to the alleged murders in the Philippines. It is the NDFP’s stand that the Dutch
prosecutor’s office went on a fishing expedition when it authorized the raids
of the NDFP office and the houses of the NDFP’s staff and volunteers.

 The searches and confiscations were conducted without the
residents being allowed to see the actual operations because they were made to
stay in one place. None of the police
showed any valid warrants. One warrant
did not even have a date. None contained
any specifications on what the police should look for. When they carted off their loot, the police
didn’t give a list of what they confiscated to the residents to make sure that
no materials would be planted or manufactured afterwards and then attributed to
the residents. These actions of the police violated the residents’ fundamental
rights to privacy, due process and against self-incrimination which are
universally recognized and accepted.

 To get directly to an
urgent point, the raid of the NDFP office and the houses of the staff and more
importantly, the arrest of Prof. Sison
have severe implications on the peace talks and all other efforts to bring
about a just and lasting peace in the Philippines. There was cold-blooded malice in the way the
raid was conducted and how Prof. Sison was arrested and consequently denied his
right to counsel.

 In the meantime, the campaign of political persecution
against Prof. Sison has not ceased. He spent almost three weeks in solitary
detention in the National Penitentiary in Scheveningen in the Hague before he was released on September
13 on trumped-up charges of orchestrating assassinations. The Dutch Justice
Ministry court that heard his case, however, declared that there was no sufficient evidence to connect
him to murders committed in the Philippines.

Despite this, the Dutch prosecutors have appealed to the Court of Appeals that
Prof. Sison be placed back in detention.

 Prof. Sison’s legal counsels appealed this decision last
September 26 on the grounds that the prosecutors failed to present any new
evidence, and that the prosecutors’ efforts to strengthen an otherwise very
weak case are futile.

It should be noted that the Supreme Court of the Philippines
itself in a landmark decision released on July 2, 2007 declared Prof. Sison
innocent of rebellion charges the same way that it said that the progressive
party-list lawmakers dubbed the Batasan 6 were not guilty of the same
accusations.

 The NDFP has already
filed charges against the GRP for the enforced disappearance of NDFP
Consultants and members. NDFP staff member Federico Intise and his wife Nelly
were abducted in General Santos City on October 26, 2006. NDFP consultant Cesar Batralo was taken in San Mateo, Rizal on December
21, 2006. Another NDFP consultant, Leo Velaso, was abducted in Cagayan de Oro
City on February 19, 2007.

 NDFP Panel Chairman Luis Jalandoni filed the formal
complaints in August 2007 before the United Nations Working Group on Enforced
and Involuntary Disappearances in Geneva
and the complaints are against Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as commander in
chief of the AFP. In April 2007, the
NDFP also filed complaints against the GRP in the same United Nations body for
the involuntary disappearances of NDFP consultant Rogelio Calubad and his son
Gabriel, and NDFP staff member Leopoldo Ancheta. The Calubads were abducted on
June 17, 2006 in Calauag, Quezon province, and Acheta on June 24 in Guiguinto,
Bulacan.

 All of these most lamentable incidents of abductions,
extrajudicial killings and the filing of false charges constitute serious
attacks on the integrity of the peace negotiations. The killings remain
unsolved as the Macapagal-Arroyo government refuses to scrap the military
operation Oplan Bantay Laya. No leads are forthcoming regarding the abducted
activists including the missing NDFP consultants. While it is true that Prof.
Sison has already been released, the trumped-up charges against him have not
been dismissed, and the Macapagal-Arroyo government continues its campaign of
political persecution against him and the NDFP. What all this implies for the
peace negotiations should be discussed in detail because they are grave and
potentially disastrous for the peace process.

 At the onset, the restoration of the files and documents of
the NDFP is an immediate concern and whatever action that can be done to
address will go a long way in clearing the clouded atmosphere that now
characterizes the peace negotiations between the GRP and the NDFP.

 There is much insight to be gained from studying the
publications that have been published and released by the NDFP through the
NDFP-MC in the JMC. The views and stands of the NDFP are all explained at
length and in depth in these publications, including Book 7 (The NDFP’s Defense
of the Rights of the Filipino Child), Book 8 (The GRP-NDFP Peace
Negotiations: Major Written Agreements
and Outstanding Issues), and Book 9 (A Comparative Study of Twenty-Three Cases
of Extrajudicial Killings Filed Against the GRP that the Macapagal-Arroyo
Regime is Attributing to the NDFP).

 There are also the various publications, reports and
statements issued by the Citizens’ Council on Truth and Accountability, Amnesty
International, Asian Human Rights Council, various chambers of Commerce,
Permanent People’s Tribunal, and the Human Rights Watch.

From reading these documents, you may be able to better
understand and trace the course that civil society can take in helping to push
the peace process forward.

It would also be most productive  to support other civil society initiatives
which have been reported in various fact-finding mission reports on the
killings, abductions, and other violations of the rights of activists, lawyers,
journalists, church people and others. In the wake of the discussions,
concerned sectors can determine the recommendations they can make, hopefully in
support of the peace process and all other efforts to uphold human rights in
the the Philippines.

All freedom-loving Filipinos are being called upon to support calls to put an end to the
extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances and other human rights
violations. This means supporting and
even participating in independent and credible investigations in accordance
with the guidelines laid down by Amnesty International and other groups.

 People’s organizations, members of the media, Church formations and human rights advocates
should push for the holding of joint
investigations by the GRP and the NDFP, whether within or outside the frame of
the JMC. The GRP must also be compelled by public pressure to abide by all
existing agreements and resolve the prejudicial questions, and to convene the
JMC so it can do its work as provided for in the CARHRIHL and the Operational
Guidelines for the Work of the JMC.

The journey towards peace starts with a single step. Join
the many others who have begun to pave the way and support the peace negotiations.
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