Brian Campbell, International Labor Rights Forum
On
October 23, 2008, while the ILRF was in the middle of proceedings at the United
States Trade Representative concerning the Philippine military campaign
against the members of the Kilusang Mayo Uno-affiliated union at Dole Foods’
plantation in Mindanao, the Government of the Republic of the
Philippines (GRP)
arrested one of the attorneys for the union representing Dole’s workers, Remigio
Saladero. Atty. Saladero now sits in jail in Mindoro,
a province far from his home and his work, as yet another victim of the Philippine
government (GRP) expanding government offensive to dismantle progressive trade
unions, political parties, and NGOs. As its weapon, the GRP is using
politically motivated prosecutions and abusing the justice system to silence
its critics.
Atty.
Saladero is not alone. In the past few weeks, the GRP has charged
71 other people along with him, a virtual who’s who list of labor and political
activists from trade unions, progressive political parties, and human rights
groups in CALABARZON, with
myriad charges stemming from the same two incidents, the burning of a cell
phone tower allegedly by the New People’s Army (NPA) and an attack by the NPA
on government troops in a different province in March 2006. Apparently, the GRP is alleging that each of
the 72 people named in the arrest warrants were responsible for the NPA’s attacks,
presumably because, the GRP argues, each are members of progressive
organizations that are allegedly “front”
organizations for the New People’s Army. In short, the GRP is alleging that
members of these progressive organizations, like the KMU and its 300,000 strong
membership, are all terrorists.
Because
Atty. Saladero represents many progressive labor unions and NGOs as an attorney
for the Pro-Labor Legal Assistance Center (PLACE), a non-profit dedicated to
representing workers and independent unions across the Philippines, and also as
legal counsel for the Kilusang Mayo Uno
(KMU) and the Anakpawis
political party, he is at the center of the GRP’s concerted efforts to bring down
these progressive organizations. Atty. Saladero and his colleagues’ at PLACE are
representing unions involved in some of the most high profile labor cases
currently pending in the Philippines, including representing workers at Hacienda Luisita,
Nestle, Chong
Won, Dole Foods, and Solidarity
of Cavite Workers. Each of these unions has had leaders assassinated or
have been subject to government sponsored harassments, either
by the military or private security forces, during the course of organizing
campaigns and collective bargaining negotiations.
Apparently,
Atty. Saladero’s legal work on behalf of progressive organizations has been
noticed by the GRP. Human rights groups have question the political motives
behind his arrest. As Human Rights
Watch noted, “Suddenly arresting a well-established activist lawyer for a
two-year-old multiple murder case in another province should set off alarm
bells. This smacks of harassment, pure and simple.”
Abusive prosecutions are not new in the Philippines. The
UN
Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, has
criticized the GRP’s Inter-agency Legal Action Group (IALAG), an executive
branch body that includes the Department of Justice and the Armed Forces of the
Philippines,
for using abusive prosecutions as a weapon to dismantle the purported front
organizations. Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch
have criticized the GRP for subverting the criminal justice system in order to
harass civil society organizations.
The Supreme Court of the Philippines has openly
questioned the partisan political motives of Secretary of Justice Raul Gonzales
and the federal prosecutors in the arrest of Anakpawis’s former Congressional representative
and veteran of the Philippine labor movement, Crispin Beltran, on charges of rebellion
in 2006. The court chastised the
Secretary of Justice and the federal prosecutors for the “obvious involvement
of political considerations in the actuations of respondent Secretary of
Justice and respondent prosecutors.” The Court also felt the need to send a stern
warning to the GRP and its prosecutors that:
[P]rosecutors
should not allow, and should avoid, giving the impression that their noble office is being used or
prostituted . . . for political ends, or other purposes
alien to, or subversive of, the basic and fundamental objective of observing the interest of justice
evenhandedly, without fear or favor to any and all litigants alike, whether rich or poor, weak or strong,
powerless or mighty.
This
is the second time the Supreme Court has had to warn the GRP to stop abusive
prosecutions aimed at progressive trade union leaders and other progressive
organizations in the past two years. In 2006,
after the Philippine government declared a state of emergency alleging that
there was a coup plot against Pres. Arroyo, progressive organizations and their
supporters protested in the streets against the sweeping martial law
declaration. Many were arrested for violating the martial law declaration. The
Philippine Supreme Court dismissed the charges and warned the GRP that if the
definition of an act of terrorism is so broad that it includes acts “hindering the growth of
the economy” and “actions [that] are adversely affecting the economy”, it will
result in abuse and oppression on the part of the police or military.
The
Supreme Court’s prescient warning is little comfort to the more than 70
progressive leaders bearing the brunt of that abuse. By targeting trade union
and other NGO leaders for abusive prosecutions, the GRP is yet again showing
why it is slipping toward autocratic
rule and why Filipino’s are losing faith in democracy.
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