MANILA – Senator Panfilo Lacson, the principal author of the controversial Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB), could not contain his disgust over the reported advice of a United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) official to President Rodrigo R. Duterte not to sign the ATB.
Senator Lacson expressed his doubt on Thursday if the said official has actually read the provision of the bill under review by the president.
During the 44th regular session of the UNCHR on Tuesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet urged President Rodrigo Duterte not to sign the said bill. Bachelet’s move may have been prompted by a bleak human rights report of the country issued lately by the UNHRC, particularly on the alleged excesses of the administration’s war on drugs and extrajudicial killings following Duterte’s ascent to power in 2016.
Bachelet fears that the passage of the measure “heightens our concerns on the blurring of important distinctions between criticism, criminality and terrorism.”
But Senator Lacson could not understand the basis of her advice because the framers of the said bill followed the guidelines of the UN. “We crafted the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 based on the guidelines and standards set by the United Nations Security Council’s (UNSC) Resolution 1373. It was the UN that prodded the Philippines to strengthen its laws against terrorism,” he said in a statement.
The lawmaker thought the UNSC members had read the provisions of the bill because they were the ones who encouraged the country to have stringent law against terrorism but apparently Ms. Bachelet did not. He stressed that the bill is not meant to be beneficial for anyone else but the Filipino people in general.
Lacson repeatedly said that the ATB is crafted to fight against terrorists and not against protesters. He expressed dismay that such unfounded criticism by a high international official could diminish the “value of open public discourse and might lose sight of logic and reason.”
The ATB will effectively amend and repeal the Human Security Act of 2007 that will punish those who will propose, incite, conspire, participate in the planning, training, preparation, and facilitation of a terrorist act; including those who will provide material support to terrorists, and recruit members in a terrorist organization.
