THE National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) has called for the repeal of the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 2020 and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act (TFPSA) of 2012, arguing they are being weaponized for oppression.
“Passed under the guise of national security, the ATA and TFPSA have institutionalized a legal regime in which dissent, humanitarian work, and armed conflict are wrongfully conflated with terrorism. These laws have created the legal cover for surveillance, harassment, arbitrary arrests, and financial sanctions,” the NUPL said in a statement posted on its Facebook page on Friday.
“As long as these laws exist, rights defenders, activists, journalists, and humanitarian workers will remain at risk — not because they have broken the law, but because they challenge the conditions of injustice that the law now seeks to protect,” it added.
The NUPL cited the cases of Southern Tagalog youth activists Fritz Jay Labiano and Adrian Paul Tagle, who were initially indicted for terrorism financing, but the charge was later dismissed.
The group claimed that the assets of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines were frozen based on “fabricated testimonies.” It also alleged that imprisoned Tacloban City community journalist Frenchie Mae Cumpio and lay worker Marielle Domequil were victims of planted evidence.
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“These cases are not exceptions or instances of mere abuse or misuse of counterterrorism laws. They are evidence of how the ATA and the TFPSA have enabled a system in which law is no longer a restraint on arbitrary power, but its most efficient instrument,” the NUPL said.
A rally was held outside the offices of the Department of Justice on Thursday, calling for the repeal of these laws.
