A LAWYER’S group
has branded the military’s Internal Peace and Security Plan “Bayanihan” as an
instrument of the big business and capitalists to drive away civilians,
particularly indigenous peoples (IPs), from “areas of interest” for
development.
The Union of
People’s Lawyers in Mindanao (UPLM), which marked its 10th year with an
island-wide gathering of legal and paralegal personalities in one of the hotels
here, said lumads have increasingly become targets of rights abuses allegedly
done by state security forces as more and more businesses seek to exploit
resource-rich tribal lands.
“Because of
militarization in the hinterlands, many of our lumads have been forced to leave
their domain, fearing they will be branded as New People’s Army supporters,
such are the cases of lumads with trumped-up charges filed by the military in
connivance with the national police,” Bayan Muna Representative and UPLM
chairman Carlos Zarate said.
Zarate said the
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has become the security agency of big
businesses owning vast plantations and of mining companies to the detriment of
the IPs.
Zarate also
deplored the fact that sometimes, even the human rights of lawyers and
paralegal personalities helping the victims are violated and rights defenders
are sometimes subjected to trumped-up charges as well.
The lawyers’
group said the judicial processes have also caused tremendous delays in the
administration of justice or worse, have sometimes resulted in preventing
justice from being served.
For this reason,
the UPLM would be pushing for judicial reforms, the lawyer’s group said.
UPLM-Northern
Mindanao said among the difficulties they face in handling cases of human
rights abuses are the often non-identification of perpetrators and the long
wait for the resolution of cases.
Dale Mordeno,
UPLM Cagayan de Oro chairman, said judicial reforms in furtherance of human
rights cases should be introduced so that abuses would be lessened or
eradicated.
“Judicial reforms
are necessary in terms of examining or revisiting existing laws that are no
longer applicable and amend those laws to suit our legal processes,” Mordeno
said.
He said UPLM is
lobbying for the passage of a bill that would put an end to strategic lawsuits
against public participation (Slapp).
Slapp, Mordeno
said, often diminishes the capacity of its members to effectively represent
their clients.
But Mordeno said
the path to the much needed reforms is circuitous as these can only be done
through the right fora such as through Congress or the Supreme Court.
More anti-military propaganda from Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) front organizations----the Union of People’s Lawyers in Mindanao (UPLM) and Bayan Muna (People First).
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