Indigenous Leaders Hail New UN Declaration

Indigenous leaders and representatives have reason to be euphoric after the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was finally adopted on Sept. 13 before the UN concluded its 61st General Assembly.

BY MAURICE MALANES
Northern Dispatch
Human Rights Watch
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 32, September 16-22, 2007

BAGUIO CITY (246 kms north of Manila) – Indigenous leaders and representatives have reason to be euphoric after the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was finally adopted on Sept. 13 before the UN concluded its 61st General Assembly.

"Sept. 13, 2007 will be remembered as...a day that the United Nations and its Member States, together with indigenous peoples, reconciled with past painful histories and decided to march into the future on the path of human rights," UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues chairperson Victoria Tauli-Corpuz said in a statement from the UN headquarters in New York.

"This day will forever be etched in our memories as a significant gain in our peoples' long struggle for our rights as distinct peoples and cultures," she added.

Some 144 countries, including the Philippines, voted for the Declaration, which indigenous representatives have helped draft and have been pushing to be adopted for the past 23 years. Four countries (USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) voted against and 11 abstained.

"We are definitely happy (over the Declaration' s adoption), but it's a shame that four countries with significant indigenous populations have voted against it," Philippine Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Watch coordinator Joan Carling said.

The Declaration, although non-binding, sets out the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, including their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues.

Carling hailed the Philippine government for voting for the Declaration, but stressed: "Let's hope government now reviews its policies favoring corporate interests and ensures that indigenous peoples participate in the management, control and development of their land and resources."

"This is a great advancement for Indigenous Peoples world wide," also said Lucy Mulenkei of the Kenya-based Indigenous Information Network, as she congratulated all the contributions of indigenous representatives worldwide.

The Declaration stresses the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions and to pursue their development in keeping with their own needs and aspirations. These were also referred as the right to self-determination.

It likewise prohibits discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their "full and effective participation" in all matters that concern them, and their right to remain distinct and pursue their own visions of economic and social development.

"The Ethnic Minority in Southeast Asia Programme (EM-SEAP) of FORUM-ASIA wishes to take part in this celebration and express our solidarity with all indigenous peoples," said Bernice See of the Bangkok-based FORUM-Asia. "We congratulate everyone who worked through the years, those who were in Geneva, New York and at home, and those who have sacrificed for the cause to bring about this minimum international standard for the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples."

Tauli-Corpuz said that the long time devoted to the Declaration was not wasted because it paved the way for "constructive dialog" among all stakeholders and led to "a better understanding of diverse world-views and cultures, a realignment of positions and, finally to the building of partnerships between states and indigenous peoples for a more and just and sustainable world."

While she respected the interpretive statements made by Member States, Tauli-Corpuz believed the significance and implications of the Declaration should not be minimized in any way, saying this would amount to discrimination.

"For us, the correct way to interpret the Declaration is to read it in its entirety or in a holistic manner and to relate it with existing international law," Tauli-Corpuz said.

For his part, Eugenio Insigne, the Philippine government representative to the UN, was quoted by a UN public information department's press release as saying that his delegation's support for the Declaration was "premised on the understanding that the right to self-determination shall not be construed as encouraging any action that would dismember or impair the territorial integrity or political unity of a sovereign or independent State."

The Human Rights Council adopted the Declaration in June 2006, over the objections of some Member States with sizable indigenous populations. The UN General Assembly deferred consideration of the text late last year at the behest of African countries, which raised objections about language on self-determination and the definition of "indigenous" people.

Insigne added that the government's support was also "based on the understanding that land ownership and natural resources were vested in the State."

The new Declaration is expected to serve as reference and framework by governments, UN agencies and the private sector in implementing what indigenous leaders call "a human rights-based approach to development" as it applies to indigenous peoples.

"I call on Governments, the UN system, indigenous peoples and civil society at large to rise to the historic task before us and make the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples a living document for the common future of humanity," Tauli-Corpuz said. Northern Dispatch / Posted by Bulatlat

Jailing Joma

He had been talking about it for years, but it seemed that outside the movement that he had led, few were listening. In 2001, Jose Maria Sison -- the exiled Filipino revolutionary leader, poet and radical intellectual -- talked of a supposed assassination plot against him by Philippine state security agents that was operationalized on May 2000 and, at the time of his revelation, was still in operation. Later, a Filipino police official, Col. Reynaldo Berroya, admitted to media that the government had indeed dispatched a team to liquidate Sison in 2000.

The leader of the team, it was later revealed, was Romulo Kintanar, former head of the New People's Army who in 1992 became an intelligence agent for the military. Along with Arturo Tabara and Nilo dela Cruz, Kintanar went to the Netherlands to carry out the plan. It was botched, according to Sison, when a "backup triggerman" was arrested by the Dutch police in an earlier separate incident. "The hit team floundered until December when once more it made a last desperate assassination attempt," said Sison. "But I did not appear at the spot where I had been anticipated."

All these have been underreported in media, even after Kintanar himself was killed by NPA partisans in 2003. According to the government and Kintanar's widow, it was plain murder. Gregorio Rosal, Communist Party spokesman, however, explained that the killing was a punitive action against an armed and dangerous man. News reports indicated Kintanar was heavily armed ("45 caliber pistol, an HK machine pistol and a Glock 9mm pistol," reported the Inquirer) at the time of his killing. (1)

Last Tuesday, August 28, the Dutch police arrested Sison. In an interview with ANC, Julie de Lima, Sison's wife, recounted how a Dutch police officer called the NDFP International Office and asked for an appointment with Sison. He requested the exiled revolutionary to go to the Police office to "pickup some documents" which, Sison assumed, were about the Dutch authorities' investigation on the 2000 assassination plot. Upon arrival at the police station, he was ordered under arrest and whisked away to the Dutch capital, The Hague, where he was held -- in Guantanamo Bay prison style -- incommunicado for charges of ordering the murder of Kintanar and Tabara in 2003 while in Dutch soil. This, according to reports, was the same prison used by the Nazis to encarcerate Jews during the Second World War.

Did Sison order the "retaliatory" assassination of Kintanar and Tabara? Reason points to the contrary. The NPA, which operates in the Philippines, had claimed responsibility of "punishing" the two military assets. It also denies that Sison has any operational control over the armed revolutionary group. Common sense would dictate that there would absolutely be no reason for Sison to be directly involved in the killing of Kintanar and Tabara. Although he is the chief political consultant for the NDFP in the negotiations, Sison is "aboveground" (as opposed to "underground", the term referred to actions outside the ambit of the legal system). By all intents and purposes, he is a public personality. And as the chairperson of the International League of Peoples' Struggle, he is a towering figure in international radical politics.

Sison is constantly under direct scrutiny from the media, who time and again asks him for opinion on Philippine matters. Filipino residents who had met him in the Netherlands and Europe say he is readily accessible to anybody who wants to meet him. It is to be assumed, too, of course, that he is under constant surveillance from the Arroyo, the Dutch and the US governments -- all of which brand him a terrorist.

Which brings me to one conclusion alone: that Sison's arrest is purely symbolic on so many levels. First, there are Kintanar and Tabara's widows, who as former revolutionary partisans should know very well the decision-making processes involved when the NPA applies "revolutionary justice" to its enemies. The Communist Party makes no secret of the fact that no single individual within its organization decides who to "punish". It is a "collective", an "organ" within the revolutionary movement, but never based on the whim of a single person, much less someone outside the country.

Second, because it takes a great stretch of imagination to conclusively pin Kintanar and Tabara's killings on Sison, the arrest and persecution is symbolic of the Philippine government's desire to put an end to the insurgency. This is revealed by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita's statement to the effect that the government sees the weakening of the NPA after Sison's arrest: "You can imagine a person who is suffering from [a] headache, when the head is adversely affected, you can see what happens to the rest of the body. It's the same thing in an organization."

Third, as an international "revolutionary" figure, Sison is a thorn to the US government's foreign policy of economic, political and military expansionism, of which he is a fierce critic. Years ago, at the onset of the US-led war on terror, it has been reported that the US government lobbied to have Sison arrested and held in custody by the US government, possibly in Guantanamo Bay prison. Today, the US government is under fire for its inhumane treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo where -- New Yorker magazine investigative journalist Jane Mayer reports, citing an internal CIA study -- more than half of the prisoners are probably innocent of the charges of terrorism and "are not even supposed to be there."

One can reasonably conclude, therefore, that Sison's arrest is a political move, calculated to weaken the revolutionary movement in the Philippines and stifle a strong voice against US "imperialism".

The Inquirer editorial, sometimes eloquently libertarian and often hopelessly naive, says in its August 31 piece that "If Sison did order the deaths of Kintanar and Tabara, no amount of revolutionary rationalization or ideological rhetoric can mask his liability." The Inquirer seems to be willing to bend logic to accomodate a long-existing prejudice against Sison (2). It is willing to believe that the Dutch government acted in good faith in arresting Sison, when in fact it has for years actively participated in denying Sison his rights as a political refugee, and even seconded the European Union in branding Sison as terrorist. Contrary to the Inquirer's claim, it is not the Dutch government, which had been trying to get rid of Sison for years, but the Filipino migrants and progressive Dutch libertarians (lawyers, politicians, activists, etc.) who have provided sanctuary to Sison.

Tragically, the editorial likewise reveals a deep distrust of the national democratic movement: that this revolution is still led, and its nefarious operations micromanaged, by no less than Sison himself, thousands of miles away from the country. And that the NPA guerrillas, its cadres and partisans are mere pawns in the game that Sison plays.

"This is the exact kind of justice, the same kind of truth-revealing investigation, that opposition politicians like [Satur] Ocampo have sought to apply to the President since the “Hello, Garci” scandal erupted over two years ago. Why, in effect, would they deny Sison his day in court?," says the editorial. In fact, there is an ocean of difference between both instances. Arroyo is still free as a bird, and, with the resources of the entire state at her disposal, wants truth stifled by suppressing evidence in Congress (i.e. EO 464 and the prohibition on playing the Hello Garci tapes), the streets (CPR), at the media (Proclamation 1017 and the libel suits). Sison, on the other hand, had previously spent a good nine years in solitary confinement for fighting the Marcos dictatorship, and today is being politically persecuted for holding fast to his principles and never backing down.

___________

Notes

(1) Under the Geneva Convention, Kintanar qualifies as a "lawful combatant" in the armed conflict between the Philippine government and the revolutionary movement of the CPP-NPA-NDFP.

Article 44.3 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions states that:

"Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly::

( a ) During each military engagement, and
( b ) During such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate. "


(2) The Inquirer has been branding Sison a "self-exile"; columnist Luis Teodoro points out that there is no such word in the English language. Its use, too, betrays a prejudice against a man who did not voluntarily "exile" himself, but was forced to live abroad because of the Philippine government's cancellation of his passport and the subsequent threats to his life

Source: http://pangkulitan.motime.com/post/676759

Pouring Fuel to the Fire*

The Netherlands government thinks that by colluding with the Philippine and U.S. government to politically persecute Mr. Jose Maria Sison and the NDFP and to scuttle the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, it has done away with a big thorn in its throat, a political embarrassment as well as a pesky obstacle to Dutch multinational corporations’ unbridled profit making in the country.

BY CAROL PAGADUAN-ARAULLO
Streetwise / Business World
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 30, September 2-8, 2007

Commenting on the arrest of Prof. Jose Ma. Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), de facto President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo immediately congratulated National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales for a job well done and called the arrest “a giant step toward peace, a victory for justice and the rule of law.”

At first, Mr. Gonzales denied the government’s role and attributed the arrest to complaints filed by the widows of two former communist leaders that the New People’s Army (NPA) had admitted to executing for their alleged criminal and counter-revolutionary activities, and independent action on these complaints by the Dutch government. Afterwards, Mr. Gonzales made no effort to deny or dissemble the Philippine government’s instigation of and full cooperation with a foreign government in effecting the same.

Mr. Luis Jalandoni, NDFP chief negotiator, on the contrary said that it would spell doom for the peace talks since Mr. Sison has played a vital role as a highly respected voice in the revolutionary movement and often the one who would formulate the language of joint statements and agreements acceptable to both parties, thus paving the way for progress in the talks, e.g. the inking the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).

More importantly, Mr. Jalandoni underscored the NDFP cannot negotiate in a situation where their consultants, staffers and members of their peace panel, are subjected to harassment, trumped up criminal charges and patently illegal attacks such as enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, arbitrary arrest and unjust detention.

Earlier, Mr. Jalandoni had been referring to the situation of NDFP consultants and personnel in the Philippines. The arrest of Sison, the interrogation of Mr. Jalandoni himself, panel member Ms. Coni Ledesma and Ms. Ruth de Leon, head of the NDFP peace panel secretariat, the simultaneous raids of the Sison residence, the NDFP office and several residences of other NDFP personalities and staffers in the Netherlands as well as the wholesale confiscation of computers, cell phones, and documents including personal diaries, has made a resumption of the talks close to, if not outright, impossible.

Simply put, the “peace” Mrs. Arroyo refers to would be the outcome of the projected defeat of the communist-led revolutionary movement through yet another “all-out war” effort with a supposedly much better trained and equipped military (courtesy of hiked U.S. military aid and bigger budgetary allocations); resort to a dirty war that includes rampant violations of human rights as a means to terrorize the rebel movement’s mass base in the countryside and legal, unarmed activists in the urban areas; and forcing the NDFP panel to capitulate in the peace negotiations by agreeing to a purported “final peace agreement” that oversees laying down of arms by the NPA in exchange for illusory socio-economic and political reforms and some form of amnesty.

It is the “peace” of the graveyard and of ignominious surrender.

Ms. Juliet de Lima, wife of Mr. Sison, said in a television interview that the attack on her husband and the NDFP in the Netherlands was an internationally-orchestrated psychological warfare operation that was intended to demoralize the revolutionary forces in the Philippines. Mr. Sison is currently incommunicado save for brief visits by just one of his lawyers, a situation unwarranted by the charge of “incitement to murder” but one that is now routinely reserved for those demonized by the US and EU countries as “terrorists.”

With the effective, though hopefully only temporary, neutralization of one of the Left’s most astute, knowledgeable, far-sighted and resilient of leaders, the reactionary and crisis-ridden government of Mrs. Arroyo thinks it has demolished the linchpin of the longest-running armed, revolutionary movement in East Asia.

The Arroyo regime is blinded by its denial of that great lesson of history – that revolutions bred by social injustice and oppression cannot be defeated, much less be eradicated, by the state’s iron hand and that brutal suppression of revolutionary leaders only constitute temporary setbacks. Many more invariably stand up to take their place in the frontlines of struggle.

The Netherlands government thinks that by colluding with the Philippine and U.S. government to politically persecute Mr. Sison and the NDFP and to scuttle the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations, it has done away with a big thorn in its throat, a political embarrassment as well as a pesky obstacle to Dutch multinational corporations’ unbridled profit making in the country.

In the process it has violated Mr. Sison’s and others’ rights to due process, it has circumvented its own laws and the European Union’s conventions on human rights, particularly the rights of political refugees, and it has clearly interfered in matters internal to the Philippines. In fact, the Dutch government has interfered in the matter of the sovereign right of the Filipino people, the right to determine its political affairs including the political settlement of internal armed conflicts. Its shameful role in this outrageous episode shall, in due time, be thoroughly exposed and it shall consequently be held accountable.

US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, while prefacing her reaction with the caveat that ”this is obviously a Philippine issue” could not help but applaud Mr. Sison’s arrest as a victory in the so-called fight against “terrorism” . Ms. Kenney’s comment betrays the underplayed but unflagging motivation of the U.S. to dispose of Mr. Sison and thereby counter his unrelenting, consistently sharp analysis and compelling calls to action against U.S. imperialism and all its instrumentalities and lackeys. In fact, the U.S. had been the first to list Mr. Sison as a “foreign terrorist” and use its formidable political and diplomatic clout to inveigh other countries to do the same.

All three governments unwittingly, if stupidly, are pouring fuel on the fire of revolution in the Philippines, in a futile attempt to put it out by fascist means, including the condemnable act of concertedly attacking Mr. Sison, an icon of the broad anti-imperialist and democratic movement at home and abroad. Business World / Posted by Bulatlat

*Published in Business World
31 August – 1 September 2007