Video prompts senators to back martial law
The video footage seized during a raid in Marawi City by the Armed Forces of the Philippines showing Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon planning the attack on the Lanao del Sur provincial capital was shown during a Senate security briefing and prompted senators to support President Duterte’s declaration of martial law in Mindanao.
“If what was revealed in that seized video is not reason enough to support the AFP under their Commander in Chief, I wouldn’t know what is,” Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former Philippine National Police chief, said in a text message.
Senators were briefed on May 29 by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Eduardo Año and National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon. The Hapilon video, publicized in newspapers on Wednesday, was shown during the briefing.
Seventeen senators approved a resolution declaring there was no need to revoke Mr. Duterte’s proclamation on May 23 of the emergency and the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus after militants of the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute group attacked Marawi. Fighting there is now in its third week.
“Our colleagues who still oppose the martial law proclamation either did not understand the gravity of the security threat posed by the rebellion in the South or they are simply opposed to anything that President Duterte does or acts on,” Lacson said.
“They planned to dismember a territory of the republic. They used terrorism to launch a rebellion,” Lacson said.
Terrorism vs rebellion
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said: “We cannot differentiate now that this is terrorism, this is rebellion. I mean if you try to establish a territory by force within a sovereign (state), I think that is clearly a rebellion.”
Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III said that the Maute group and Hapilon were “planning an invasion using Marawi as their base.”
Sotto said it was like the alliance wanted to pull the same thing that happened in Syria, which is battling the Islamic State (IS) group.
He said the military knew the identity of all the men in the video and there were two persons actually videotaping the planning session.
The video was taken from a house that the Maute group had occupied in Marawi, according to Sotto.
Joint session of Congress
Sen. Grace Poe said the video confirmed suspicions that the Maute group was connected with foreign terrorists.
But Poe insisted that Congress still needed to convene a joint session to discuss the martial law proclamation to find out whether this would go beyond the constitutional limit of 60 days.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan said the minority bloc agreed terrorism “must be addressed with the full force of the law.”
“Yet it must be noted that terrorist attacks in Manchester, London and Paris did not necessitate the declaration of martial law,” Pangilinan said in a text message.
He said that having lived under the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, he understood the gravity of martial law.
“We also understand that our Constitution is a serious document and its martial law provisions cannot be simply set aside or disregarded. We should fight lawlessness and terrorism by strict adherence to the rule of law and not by violating the Constitution we swore to uphold. Otherwise, we end up becoming the monster we seek to defeat,” Pangilinan said.
Petitions before high court
Another group of petitioners went to the Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking to compel the House of Representatives and the Senate to hold a joint session to discuss the President’s declaration.
The petition, by former Sen. Wigberto Tañada, Catholic bishops Deogracias Iniguez, Broderick Pabillo and Antonio Tobias, Sister Adelaida Ygrubay and student leaders Shamah Bulangis and Cassandra Deluria, was filed a day after a group of lawyers brought a similar plea to the high court.
Seven opposition lawmakers had likewise questioned in the high court the constitutionality of Mr. Duterte’s move.
The militant Kilusang Mayo Uno on Wednesday demanded the lifting of martial law condemned alleged military abuses against striking banana plantation workers in Compostela Valley.
According to the group, 12 workers of the Korean-owned Shin Sun Tropical Fruit Corp. and their supporters, including a minor and an elderly, were injured and arrested on June 2 when Army soldiers and policemen dispersed the 2-month-old strike against contractualization and union-busting.
“We condemn the violent dispersal and arrests of striking Shin Sun workers in Mindanao. The despotic military officials in connivance with foreign and local capitalists have been using Duterte’s martial law as a license to curtail civil liberties and suppress workers’ legitimate and just demands,” Jerome Adonis, KMU secretary general, said in a statement. —WITH REPORTS FROM MARLON RAMOS AND TINA G. SANTOS
