PETITIONERS seeking to declare as unconstitutional the Anti-Terrorism law have pleaded anew before the Supreme Court for the issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) that would immediately stop the law’s implementation.
The plea was made in a joint reiterative motion they filed last Monday, February 22, 2021, particularly seeking for immediate relief through the issuance of a TRO.
The petitioners cited several incidents involving the arrest of several individuals, including some listed petitioners in the 37 petitions against ATA allegedly by police or military forces.
These include the arrest of Chad Errol Booc, a volunteer teacher, and Windel Bolinget, chairman of the Cordillera People’s Alliance, which is one of the ATA petitioners, at the retreat house of the University of San Carlos in Cebu City for allegedly “recruiting and exploiting minors to be trained as child warriors.”
They also cited the threat aired by Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. against online journalist Tetch Torres Tupas for her article on two Aeta tribesmen who were reportedly arrested and charged, among others, with violations of ATA.
Parlade has issued an apology to Tupas later.
They also noted the alleged continuous red tagging of activists, including advocacy lawyers, by the military and the police.
The petitioners stressed that based on the investigation conducted by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), there was no evidence of indoctrination to join the communist movement committed by Booc and Bolinget.
“These supervening events, along with other recent developments…underscore the chilling effect that the ATA exerts on the public, restraining the persons from exercising their freedom of expression and other constitutional rights,” the motion read.
“Such acts are indicative of the government’s spirit of hostility, nor at the very least, discrimination that finds no support in reason with which it will implement the vague and overbroad terms of the ATA. Thus, petitioners asked for and were granted leave by the Honorable Court to file the instant joint motion reiterating their extremely urgent plea for injunctive relief to forestall further serious violations of constitutional rights,” it added.
In seeking the immediate issuance of a TRO, the petitioners maintained that ATA violates at least 15 fundamental rights of the people— on speech and expression, religion, assembly, association, unreasonable searches and seizures, travel, bail, presumption of innocence, information, and torture, among others.
The SC has been holding oral arguments on the petitioners for the past three weeks.
In the past three hearings, the magistrates have so far heard the arguments of the petitioners.
The justices have yet to hear the expert opinion of retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno and retired Associate Justice Francis Jardeleza, who have been appointed as amici curiae (friends of the Court) on the issue.
The scheduled arguments on February 23 have been canceled by the SC after some of the magistrates decided to go on self-quarantine as a health precaution against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
It set the continuation of the oral argument on March 2, 2021.