Trouble in the diaspora

 

 

A malicious and hideous blog that goes by the title of Blood Stained Singapore has become the bane of the Filipino diaspora in the prosperous and sovereign city-state and island nation in Southeast Asia.

 

Catching fire in blogger traffic, the sensationalist post has been viewed 529,301 times and shared in social media platforms. The original blog post dated May 24 encourages Singaporeans to show displeasure and intolerance for Filipinos. For a while it has appeared to be taken down, but was republished on Monday, June 16.

A sharp rise in the foreign population of Singapore has ratcheted up racial
tensions. Photo by Reuters/Edgar Su.

The aforementioned Singapore blogger has proposed a five-point guide for Singaporeans to show they do not tolerate the presence of Filipinos whom he has described as having infested the island nation. Here are the five ways the blogger recommended showing displeasure to Filipinos:

 

1. When you encounter a Pinoy waiter/waitress or customer service officer, reject and ask for a replacement by telling this: “Could you kindly ask a Singaporean staff to speak to me? Your standard of English – there is much left to be desired.” If the idiot continues rambling on, tell him/her with a smile: “Your English sucks, capisce? Get the fuck out of my uncaring face and find me someone else, pronto.”

 

2. When the Peenoise become rowdy or do not deserve basic social decorum, a little “nudge” in the right direction won’t harm. Just make it look accidental. Pump your fist in victory later when they are out of your sight. We understand sometimes they just don’t get it, so a little more force must be employed. Like what this unsung hero did: “This morning at Bishan Circle Line MRT I pushed a Pinoy out of the train before door closes.”

 

3. When dining at Jollibee or any other Filipino themed restaurant, toss food into your mouth, chew thoroughly, and then spit it out. Bite another morsel and repeat. Do this till your plate is a masterpiece of regurgitated nastiness. Ask for the bill (pay in cash), scribble “Pinoy food fucking tastes like shit” on the receipt and remember to leave that piece of paper behind.

 

4. Never render help when Filipinos are involved in serious traffic accidents. Do not call the ambulance. But you have our permission to take photographs so they can be tweeted later with the caption: Hopefully another Pinoy has breathed his last on the little red dot. RIP.NOT.

 

5. Pray for a flood of biblical proportions to descend upon Orchard Road on 8 June (Filipinos have cancelled a parade to celebrate Philippine Independence Day because of public order and safety concerns). Go to the nearest church and pray. Pray hard for divine intervention aloud. Make sure God (and the Pinoy sitting next to you on the same bench) hears every word.

 

6. The Singapore blogger added #6 to his anti-Filipino guide as a bonus point. If you see a Pinoy cashier at NTUC, Cold Storage or Giant, throw a can of Baygon into your shopping before approaching him/her to make payment. When the cashier picks up the insecticide spray ready to do a barcode scan, ask him/her wryly: “Is this effective against Filipinos? Sorry, I meant cockroaches.”

 

On its face, the blog appears very juvenile and immature. It has created a groundswell of infuriated comments on the web from both Filipinos and Singaporeans alike. It also caught the attention of civil society organizations in Singapore which put out a statement condemning racist and xenophobic rhetoric and behaviour in Singapore that threatens the human rights of all (especially migrants) and the health of political discourse.

 

On the other hand, the blog could just be a troll which in Internet slang is someone who posts inflammatory statements with the intent to upset and provoke readers into an emotional response. The goal of the troll is to draw blog traffic towards his or her site, which the Singapore blogger has obviously achieved in attracting more than half a million viewers.

 

But not to Marc Titus Cebreros, chief of the Philippines’ Human Rights Information and Communication Division, who considers the Singaporean blog as “a black and white case of hate speech and hate mongering that deserves to be condemned and penalized.” Rightfully so, because such hate speech and mongering is penalized in many jurisdictions in the world today. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also condemned the “thuggish behavior” of people who harassed the organizers of the Philippine Independence Day celebration, calling them a “disgrace to Singapore.”

Orchard Road in Singapore where Filipinos originally planned to celebrate
Philippine Independence Day last June 8 but was cancelled due to public order
and safety concerns. Photo by Komar/Shutterstock.com

Reading through the long thread of comments by Filipinos on the Internet about the Singaporean blog has surprisingly revealed a treasure trove of interesting and intelligent opinions, dealing with issues that range from the pleasant and innocuous behaviour of the Filipino diaspora to the various arguments on why so many Filipinos are leaving the country to work abroad. The exchange of opinions is both lively and enlightening, so unlike the social and political forum on the web I have joined which is largely peppered (pardon my lack of sense of humour) with trite and hollow postings by members who are supposedly adept in political and social issues.

 

Going back to the Singaporean’s xenophobic blog, this irrational fear of foreigners and their unwarranted bashing appear on the rise almost everywhere in the world. Sometimes the familiar chant of “USA, USA, USA” that we hear during sporting events strikes a diaphanous sense of superiority, a triumphal exclamation of exceptionalism, especially when we hear it in non-sporting occasions. But most of the time, this unwelcoming attitude to foreigners is unjustified.

 

For instance, most of the criticisms leveled against foreign migrant labour are unfounded. In Canada and other advanced economies including Singapore, this underclass of labour is generally seen as taking jobs away from the host country’s citizens. These are mostly menial and low-paying jobs that citizens usually prefer not to take and employers are willing to let others like migrants do for them at lower wages. Overseas Filipino workers are by and large overqualified for these jobs but are prepared to be underemployed rather than remain idle and jobless at home.

 

Thus, in Singapore, most of the Filipinos working there are domestic helpers, health care assistants, in sales and retail and other service industries. These are highly qualified workers by virtue of their education and training, but could not be absorbed by the local Philippine economy because of lack of employment opportunities.

 

So when Filipinos are hired to work overseas, they are being brought in to take on low-paying jobs that are not at par with their skills and training credentials. Thus, they form an underclass that is not only underpaid, but also deprived of government protections and generally without the opportunity of a pathway to permanent residence and citizenship.

 

When the Singaporean blogger claims of “Filipino infestation” of his island nation, he is either in denial or ignorant of the benefits of Filipino cheap labour to Singapore as a whole. And when he asks his fellow Singaporeans to follow his five-point anti-Filipino guide, he goes beyond xenophobia and commits the most disgraceful act of inhumanity against Filipinos.

 

In Western Europe particularly, xenophobia against new immigrants from Eastern Europe, Islamic countries and African nations is far more serious that these newcomers are regarded as an existential threat to their dominant culture. They sanitize their nativist resentment against everything foreign with irrational arguments against immigration, and sometimes stir up extreme patriotism on the pretext of national self-defence.

According to a Hong Kong local government think-tank, even Hong Kong is now afflicted with xenophobia directed against Chinese mainlanders, which it describes as an alarming trend towards narrow nativism in recent years. It cited various reasons for the conflicts between Hongkongers and mainlanders, some bend on the ridiculous — such as traders snapping up baby formula, causing a shortage for local mothers. Or some mainlanders talking loudly, behaving in a disorderly and impolite manner, or refusing to queue up, which overseas Filipinos have also been criticized for.

 

The Singaporean blogger’s attempt to demonize Filipinos does not add to a robust political dialogue and the promotion of the values of equality and universal human rights. Civil society organizations in Singapore have spoken and they have identified that the key to addressing the economic frustrations of many Singaporeans is to amend the economic policies and structures that cause Singapore’s worsening inequality and marginalization. They are correct in saying that these inequitable policies were not instituted by migrants and will not automatically disappear if the migrant population decreases.

 

Blood Stained Singapore, the blog, does not enrich this political conversation. Rather, it diminishes the humanity of Filipinos, and Singaporeans as well.

Squatting as a basic right

 

 

Modern-day squatters are both poor and homeless.

 

In the Philippines, squatters are second and third generations of original settlers from the rural areas looking for a better life in the city. They have settled mostly on unoccupied and unused public lands which include river and railroad embankments, esteros (estuary in English), the space underneath bridges, and garbage dumpsites and landfills (like the infamous Smokey Mountain). Or if they have inhabited private lands, these are mostly abandoned or unused. Over time, these squatter dwellers have become the city’s wellspring of workers, whether in construction, factory, transportation, and maintenance, and other types of contractual labour that keep the underground economy flourishing. It is also fair to say that these squatter colonies are centres that attract criminal and gang activities.

Squatters in Manila. Photo courtesy of Ole Ronberg. Click link to view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwfM0AnOjoU, Slums of Manila - Dirty
River - Part I by Christopher Wieser.

Eviction of squatters without resettlement is short-sighted and self-defeating because this encourages them to relocate to another squatter colony. Eviction by violence is certainly inhumane and disregards the legal and human rights of squatters. They have rights, too, regardless of their poverty. They participate in the political process called elections and pay their taxes just like other citizens. And like everyone else, they also have the right to own property, a right included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard for all.

 

Because the government has failed to improve the quality of life for the poor and to eliminate poverty and homelessness, the poor and homeless have come up with their solution – squatting. It is about time to think outside the box and consider squatting as a potential solution rather than a symptom of poverty and homelessness.

 

In the favelas (shanty towns) of Brazil, for example, squatters have been integrated and upgraded to the urban community rather than evicted. Many of the residents have managed to gain title to the land and are able to improve their homes.

 

In a capitalist society, people have always accepted the hegemony of private property. Squatting as a solution, however, challenges this hegemony. As basic as any human right, i.e., shelter and property, squatting for the purpose of claiming this right is justifiable. The right to property can also be argued as the more basic right to shelter and to inhabit land, rather than the capitalistic right to literal land.

 

The enforcement of the right to land and shelter is in keeping with the dignity of the person and full respect for human rights. This is echoed in the 1987 Philippine Constitution which assigns to the state a mandate to free the people from poverty by improving the quality of their lives. When the state fails in this obligation, the squatters who are most vulnerable are justified in asserting their rights in maintaining their human dignity and improving their quality of life.

 

The right to squat is also bolstered by the needs of the urban poor for shelter and property. Although interrelated, there is a difference between the rights argument and the needs argument. The poor have both the need and the right, but their right is not based upon their need for shelter but because property or land is a basic right. Under this view, the poor are considered as integrated citizens who have equal rights as their more affluent counterparts. In evicting them, the government denies squatters their basic right to property or land, and in failing to integrate them just like the poor in the favelas of Brazil, the government further compounds its failure in its obligation to treat them as equal citizens like everyone else in the community.

Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo courtesy of debbieaspin,

If we accept that squatters have this basic right to property or land, the needs argument entitles them to their illegally obtained housing because they have a greater need that surpasses the needs of the legal owners of the property. This was illustrated during Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 when squatters warned the new regime that if they did not provide decent housing, they would occupy vacant apartments in the city. Two days later, some three hundred homeless families took over empty apartment blocks in south Tehran. While the government quickly evicted the student squatters who joined the squats for political reasons, those families who squatted out of necessity evaded government eviction because losing their squatted homes was a threat to their well-being.

 

A similar phenomenon happened in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2007. The Tower, an unfinished 45-storey building in the city centre that was supposed to be Venezuela’s answer to Wall Street, was invaded by several hundred men, women, and children, led by a group of hard-nosed ex-convicts who camped out there. A woman who was part of the invasion recalled to a writer with The New Yorker, “We entered as if into a cave, like pigs, all in there together. We opened the gate, and from that day on we’ve been living there.” She was frightened, but she felt she had no choice. “Everyone was looking for a roof over their heads, because no one had anywhere to live.”

 

Soon after, hundreds of vacant buildings in Caracas have been occupied by large organized groups of squatters known as invasores: apartment blocks, office towers, warehouses, shopping malls. Invasores now occupy some hundred and fifty-five Caracas buildings.

 

Both the Tehran and Caracas squats, which have varying lengths of squatting time, demonstrate that the needs argument works stronger than the rights argument in practice. Pushed to the point of desperation, the poor would act swiftly and this desperate need easily validates the needs argument, showing that it is much more difficult to enforce the basic right to property merely on the strength of the rights argument.

 

An understanding of distributive justice in John Rawls’ seminal work, A Theory of Justice, helps in appreciating equality in the right to own property as a convincing argument for squatting. Rawls explains his idea of justice as fairness with two principles. The first principle, the liberty principle, demands equality in basic rights for all people, such as the freedom of expression and the right to hold property, similar to the rights argument addressed here earlier. The second principle, called the difference principle, states that equal opportunity must be given to all people, and the only justification for inequality is if it results in the “greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.”

 

Rawlsian logic contends that property must be distributed in a manner that helps those who are less well off. Squatters have equal rights to own property, but the legal system and property system do not provide equal opportunity to own property in the form of housing. Squatters squat because they cannot afford property and the system does not compensate for this inequality. They cannot obtain jobs because they do not have homes, and they cannot rent or buy homes because they do not have jobs. It is a vicious cycle that the homeless and poor cannot rise above.

 

The hegemony of property under the capitalist system leads to greater inequality. Squatting challenges the cycle of poverty and homelessness by allowing them to gain property without the “proper” tools such as wealth or legal representation. If we accept that squatters have a right to own property, then it is the government’s obligation to provide them with the equal opportunity to obtain it. When they are not given this opportunity, squatters may take it upon themselves to own a home or property.

 

Squatters must be allowed by the government to stake a claim on a piece of unused land as their home and property. They may infringe upon the basic rights of others, the legal property owners, creating a conflict as one person who seeks to claim the right to own property violates another individual’s right to own property. In this case, Rawls second principle should resolve the conflict in favour of the squatters, wherein the infringement upon the liberty principle of another is acceptable so long as it results in a net benefit to the least of society.

 

Instead of evicting squatters through violence which the government easily takes as a logical solution to squatting, why not look at squatting as a possible solution to poverty and homelessness? The Philippines can learn from examples in other countries of various ways of legitimizing squatting, such as inaction in Costa Rica, redistribution in Kenya, and formal land titles in Brazil.

Riverfront living quarters in Manila. Photo courtesy of Frisno Bostrom. Click
link to view Brgy. San Roque, Navotas Violent Dispersal, Tudla Productions,
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=qWtrOYpw41Q

Costa Rica’s approach to squatting has been to silently accept and ignore the squatting issue. This does not mean, however, that Costa Rica didn’t do anything. It has formalized squatting through a legislation called the Homesteading Law which has also been applied in the Philippines in the early fifties to encourage settlement in Mindanao. The law allows squatters to acquire title if they stay for 10 years, but only if the property is untitled. Titled privately owned land is not legally attainable by squatters. But reality in Costa Rica shows that the law has been virtually ignored and squatter rule is applied. In effect, the government has allowed the informal property system to trump the legal property system by allowing squatters to ignore the law.

 

Another solution is the legalization of squats into formal land titles as a method of activating dead capital. Brazil is one country that has actually proposed to legalize extralegal property. It has decriminalized squatting and accepts it as a solution to the multiple land and property problems that Brazil has faced. Only the future will tell if the change in Brazil’s property system truly empowers the poor by allowing squatters to capitalize on their dead capital.

 

Kenya’s experience also shows how redistribution works in government repossession of all lands owned by absentee landlords and redistributing them to squatters. Land is redistributed to squatters, rather than to all citizens because squatters constitute the least-advantaged members of society and will benefit most from the land, following Rawls’ difference principle. It is not a revolutionary change in the property system, but the response has satisfactorily provided for an underserved sector of the population the government is responsible to serve.

 

The Philippines needs a more dynamic response to its squatting crisis. When the law no longer serves the people, as in the case of all squats, the law must change. The government cannot continue to ignore squatters until they decide that they need the land.

 

Those fortunate to have shelter also have a social responsibility to provide shelter to those without, either by providing shelter as the approach has traditionally been or by allowing them opportunities to find their own shelter. This is a social responsibility necessary to ensure the preservation of human dignity. Not a new exhortation, because in the Philippines, Gawad Kalinga, a social initiative to build communities to end poverty and homelessness, has already planted the seeds of this culture of caring and giving as a means to restore the dignity of the poor.

Work like any other, work like no other

 

 

In July 2005, the European Court of Human Rights in Siliadin v. France ruled that France violated Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights that prohibits slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour. This groundbreaking case raised worldwide awareness about the plight of domestic workers and gave impetus for change in countries such as the United Kingdom, which adopted new legislation criminalizing modern slavery.

 

Putting domestic workers on the level of modern slaves has inspired the popular view that although domestic work is “work like any other,” it should also be treated as “work like no other.”

 

Foreign domestic workers assail the decision of the Hong Kong Court of Final
Appeal last March 25, 2013 dismissing the appeal of two Filipino domestics to
declare unconstitutional HK's refusal to grant them permanent resident status.
Photo courtesy of Kin Cheung/Associated Press.

Yet, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal seems oblivious and insensitive to the importance of recognizing domestic work as work like no other. In its recent decision last March 25, 2013, the Hong Kong court ignored universal recognition of the rights of migrant workers, particularly foreign domestic workers, as enshrined in various United Nations conventions. I am referring to the court’s ruling that foreign domestic helpers are not allowed to settle permanently in Hong Kong even if they have been resident for seven years, which is the period that would ordinarily qualify foreigners to become permanent residents of Hong Kong under its Basic Law.

 

Paragraph 4, Article 24, of Hong Kong’s Basic Law states that permanent residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall include “persons not of Chinese nationality who have entered Hong Kong with valid travel documents, have ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than seven years and have taken Hong Kong as their place of permanent residence before or after the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.” Two Filipino domestic workers sought permanent residency by arguing that banning them from becoming permanent residents is unconstitutional under Article 24 but Hong Kong’s high court ruled against them.

 

According to the Hong Kong court, the true definition of “ordinarily residing” for the purposes of Article 24 of its Basic Law does not apply to over 286,000 foreign domestic workers, largely from the Philippines and Indonesia. In other words, the court’s restrictive definition means that these workers are not entitled to residency on a par with other foreigners.

 

Foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong typically work in private homes, performing various household tasks, such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, gardening and caring for children or elderly people. These are workers similar to the live-in caregivers in Canada, and most of the time, this type of work is done by women. Many Hong Kong families and expatriates consider domestic workers as their servants who are essential in looking after their households so they can freely pursue their employment or businesses. As maids or servants, these workers are excluded from the legal minimum wage and other basic services.

 

“The foreign domestic helper is obliged to return to the country of origin at the end of the contract, and is told from the outset that admission is not for the purposes of settlement and that dependents cannot be brought to reside in Hong Kong,” the top court said in a 49-page judgment.

 

In essence, what the Hong Kong court is saying is that domestic workers are on a different category and that their employment is very restrictive.  Domestic workers, in short,  are not good enough for the country. As a result, the Hong Kong court has set back the clock for human rights to the stone age. It is a retrograde decision that effectively allows institutional discrimination. Or worse, it allows slavery or servitude.

 

Under Article 39 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and other international labour conventions which Hong Kong have signed to shall remain in force and shall be implemented through the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. One of the most pertinent provisions of ICCPR in Part III, Article 8(1,2) refers to the prohibition of slavery and servitude, which are the very same provisions enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and other similar UN conventions. These are the pertinent provisions which the landmark case of Siliadin v. France identified as having been infringed and thus found France culpable for violating its positive obligation to prohibit servitude.

 

The Hong Kong court also ignores Article 11 of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, another convention that took into account the principles embodied in the basic instruments of the United Nations concerning human rights, which provides that “no migrant worker or member of his or her family shall be held in slavery or servitude.” Similarly, the court also derogated from the human rights protections prescribed by the Domestic Workers Convention of 2011.

 

In excluding foreign domestic workers from permanent residency, the Hong Kong court did not simply restrict its definition of the state’s Basic Law but also offered a narrow-minded and discriminatory categorization of domestic workers. While most other countries allow foreigners under their laws to apply for permanent resident status, Hong Kong continues to treat domestic workers as slaves or servants and essentially beneath other foreigners. In other words, in a country that acknowledges the obligation to observe and implement human rights protections in its Basic Law, these protections are irrelevant to domestic workers.

Hong Kong domestic workers protest court decision to ban them from permanent
residency. Photo courtesy of Meaghan Fitzpatrick/CBC News. Click link to view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTz3w3Istb0, Hong Kong Maids Lose
 Residency Fight



The human rights approach to the rights of domestic workers is now considered universal, stringent entitlements. Disadvantages have been historically created for their sector because of the very nature of their work and their working conditions. They have been mostly excluded from labour legislation even as studies have shown widespread abuses of domestic workers such as withholding their passports, exploitative working relations and conditions like having no rooms of their own and being compelled to be available 24/7, inadequate meals, and physical abuse or assault. The location of domestic labour makes the workers even more vulnerable to abuse by the employers. Domestic labour also has a stigma attached to it, because it is the poorest and neediest who are occupied in it, and due to the tasks required from the workers, is mostly done by women and undervalued.

 

Notwithstanding the exploitative working conditions of domestic workers, the positive effect of paid domestic work for contemporary society cannot be underestimated. Having domestic workers is beneficial for family members, the employers and the market as a whole. In today’s economic setting, domestic work is vital for the sustainability and function of the economy outside the household.

 

This is why Hong Kong’s Basic Law has recognized the human rights protections provided in UN and other international conventions. What the Hong Kong court did in excluding domestic workers from the beneficial effect of Article 24 of its Basic Law is to contradict what it says it is obligated to uphold. The worst it has achieved is to divide its population into two distinct groups: 1) those who are citizens and permanent residents and are protected under the law, and 2) those who are to be treated as servants or slaves and outside the aegis of the law. This is pure and repulsive discrimination, reminiscent of apartheid and the segregation of blacks in the United States.

 

If the Philippine government has any decency and diplomatic clout left in dealing with other nations, this is one occasion for our leaders to stand up and fight for our poor and exploited workers in Hong Kong, mostly women who have sacrificed their dignity by working beneath their skills and talents to take care of their families back home. Never mind that these are some of our overseas foreign workers (OFWs) who keep the nation’s economy afloat because of the dollars they remit. No decent and proud nation or government can turn a blind eye and condone this hideous treatment of its citizens abroad.

Religion versus freedom of speech

 

 

When he was eighteen years old, Filipino patriot Graciano Lopez Jaena wrote a character sketch entitled Fray Botod (Big-Bellied Friar) where he caricatured the typical Spanish friar as abusive, cruel, lazy, independent, greedy and lustful. It earned him the scorn of the Church as friars tried to locate him and give him the punishment they thought he deserved. His brother Doroteo buried the manuscript under their house before it could be searched, saving Graciano from the friars’ wrath. It was Graciano’s first act of protest against the Spanish authorities that led to another until his relatives decided to ship him to Spain so he could continue his medical studies. Barely twenty years old, Graciano would join Marcelo del Pilar, Jose Rizal and others in the Philippine Propaganda movement to fight for reforms in the islands for the next sixteen years of his life.

 

Rizal’s Padre Damaso, the antagonist Franciscan priest in the novel, Noli Me Tangere, who was eventually exposed as Maria Clara’s father towards the end of the story, could easily be Graciano’s Fray Botod. Thus, why Carlos Celdran, on September 30, 2010, dressed in black like the country’s national martyr Rizal, chose to carry a placard bearing Padre Damaso’s name inside the Manila Cathedral to dramatize his protest against the Catholic clergy for their almost fanatical objection to the proposed Reproductive Health (RH) bill in Congress. All Celdran wanted to convey was a simple message: that the Catholic bishops stop meddling in the affairs of the state.

Dressed in black like Jose Rizal, artist Carlos Celdran holds a sign bearing Padre
Damaso's name inside the Manila Cathedral in protest against the Catholic clergy's
opposition to the proposed Reproductive Health Bill in Congress.Click link to view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5SBnkKURDI, "Punto por Punto: Carlos Celdran,
guilty sa kasong "offending religious feelings."

If this were the Spanish colonial times, Celdran could have long been vanished to Europe or to Toronto where he has gained a more receptive following among expatriate Pinoys for his jaunty and critical one act-travelogue, an interesting mix of humour, wit and satire about the Philippines and the pervasive influence of the Church in present-day politics. But the incident brings out Spanish colonial era déjà vu right from the start, it seems.

 

Under the ambiguous heading of “offending the religious feelings” in Article 133 of the Philippines’ Revised Penal Code, a Metropolitan Trial Court in Manila found Carlos Celdran guilty of performing an act “notoriously offensive to the feelings of the faithful.” This was a little-known and rarely used law, but perhaps not during the Spanish colonial period where there was no separation of Church and State. Celdran could be sentenced to a prison term of not less than two months and 21 days and not more than one year, one month and 11 days.

 

Human rights sympathizers swarmed Facebook and Twitter pages with criticisms of the court’s decision. “This is a setback for free speech in the Philippines, which prides itself on being a democracy,” Human Rights Watch Asia declared as it was alarmed by the use of an “archaic” law to prosecute Celdran.

 

“What? Have you all reverted to being colonialism’s indios?” one blogger posted in Facebook. “Vatican colony,” wrote another.

 

Celdran’s case might have opened a huge trove of anti-Church sentiments, although this is not as straightforward as it may seem. The impugned article in the Penal Code may sound archaic or 16th century vintage, but it is a provision common to many penal codes. Even advanced democracies such as the U.S., England and Canada have a similar provision in their books as a reasonable limitation to free speech. What Celdran’s case certainly has surfaced to our consciousness is the growing conundrum nowadays in balancing the freedom of religion with the right to free speech.

 

In the present Celdran case, we are fortunate that this clash of two basic freedoms is limited to the issues of separation of Church and State and the right of women to reproductive health. In other jurisdictions or states, the simmering conflict is even much more intense, in that the underlying conflict is philosophical, and challenges our presumptions about religion and the right to free speech.

 

There is a current trend, both in Europe as well as in the United States, to give freedom of religion far more importance than it actually deserves. When someone puts an image of Jesus in a glass of urine, is this art? Admittedly, it is utterly tasteless. But it falls completely under freedom of speech.

 

Some Christians are, of course, offended. But they are not burning down art galleries, beheading artists, or killing other Christians to show their dislike. Contrast that with followers of Islam, who would go completely berserk if an artist were to place a copy of the Koran in a jar of urine. They would readily kill any number of people, including their own, to show their fury.

 

To Islamic militants, there is no right to free speech based on their religion’s premises. Rights are principles that specify the kinds of actions a person should be able to take. Islamists contend that if there is no right to “offend God,” then there is no right to free speech. Whether or not we have the right to “offend God” depends on the source and nature of rights. Such is the nature of the current debate ever since the Cartoon Jihad was published. Those from the religious right have come to the defence of the right to free speech while Islamic militants, founding their arguments on their religion, have maintained that there is no right to free speech.

 

Being God’s creatures, people of faith owe an unconditional obedience to his will. The Scriptures are replete with examples of the kind of obedience people ought to show God. Like Islam, both Judaism and Christianity prohibit speech offensive to God, and both call for those who violate this tenet to be put to death. From the Old Testament, for example:

 

“Whoever curses his God shall bear his sin. Whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.” Leviticus 24:16

 

“If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” . . . you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him.” Deuteronomy 13:6–9

 

Most of us would naturally brush aside such passages from the Bible, saying God didn’t really mean those parts. We should thank the Renaissance and the Enlightenment for not taking religion as seriously as did their forebears. We do not stone blasphemers to death anymore or burn them at stake. We just call for censorship or regulation – of television, radio, the press, the Internet, video games and so on, and we are making headway in our efforts to moderate human excesses.

 

Thus, when faced with something like the Cartoon Jihad, we are compelled to blur our statements to accommodate both religious extremes, putting down Muslim images as unacceptable, as with anti-Christian messages, or any other religious belief. What this really means is that individuals have a right to free speech but may not criticize religion.

 

We should be grateful to the Church in the Philippines that we are not yet even at the crossroads of an intellectual battle against religion, as it is abroad and in most countries where Islam is on the rise. Carlos Celdran simply waged a battle against the Catholic clergy for their medieval tendency to obstruct in the affairs of the state. Celdran did not question his faith despite his antics.

 

What exactly did Carlos Celdran perform that was “notoriously offensive to the feelings of the faithful?” He was carrying a sign of Padre Damaso while inside the Manila Cathedral, not during the celebration of mass. Besides, the Manila Cathedral is the usual venue for his one-act travelogue that attracts tourists to his show.

 

At most, since the Manila Cathedral is a private property of the Catholic Church, Celdran should have been accosted and asked to leave the premises or warned that he should be charged with trespassing for disturbing the peace if he did not comply. Sentencing him to spend time in prison is a knee-jerk reaction from a judge who obviously does not understand how to balance the antagonistic relationship between freedom of religion and the right to free speech in this day and age.

 

Both rights to exercise one's religious belief and free speech are fundamental in  a democracy. However, these rights are not absolute but subject to certain necessary and reasonable limitations. For example, you cannot shout “fire” inside a moviehouse to spread panic. Nor practice human sacrifice or allow suicide in order to cause death to others even if your religion calls for it.

 

In a modern society where a free market of ideas is allowed to flourish, there are bound to be opposing views, something is bound to offend someone at anytime. But there can be no real freedom of expression if everyone has immunity from being offended. The dilemma of right of religion versus freedom of speech must be weighed against the harm such exercise brings to society. In Carlos Celdran’s case, the punishment does not the fit the offence.

Big Brother is watching

 

 

Welcome to the new normal.

 

Starting January 2013, Citizenship and Immigration Canada will implement a host of changes that will overhaul the entire immigration system—from revising the point grid for selection of new immigrants to the new Skilled Trades Stream designed to address labour shortages to facilitating travel to Canada if you’re visiting or working. “These changes are long overdue and will help us move to a fast and flexible immigration system that works for Canada’s economy,” Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced in a recent press release.

 

Underneath all these new changes is a seemingly harmless but potentially discriminatory policy to require nationals from 29 countries and one territory to provide their biometrics when they apply to travel to Canada to visit, study or work. Requiring fingerprints and photographs, Minister Kenney stressed, is “one of the most effective ways to identify individuals entering the country. By providing immigration officials with greater certainty, biometrics will facilitate legitimate travel to Canada.”

Since the events on September 11, 2001, the biometric community
has made vast technological improvements in protecting the United
States and its borders. Click link to view "Biometrics Since 9/11,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dnXWGxn20w

This new requirement for biometrics applies to all persons from the following countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Vietnam, and Yemen.

 

One can only begin to speculate why these countries were selected, with the exclusion of others. A common thread that binds these countries is the ongoing war or civil strife in their territories that makes them a natural breeding ground for Islamic terrorists and intransigent rebel groups, or for criminals to operate. Right away, biometrics stigmatizes applicants from these countries since there is a putative perception they are being targeted precisely for the purpose of singling out undesirables like those engaged in terrorism or criminality.

 

Canada Immigration is using code words such as “legitimate travel” and “to protect the safety and security of Canadians” which Mr. Kenney has emphasized in his press release. This means that those who are engaged in terrorism and criminality pose a great danger to Canadian society and should be not be allowed to enter the country. But in identifying a pool of specific countries that should provide biometrics, Canada Immigration is immediately marking people from these source-countries as potentially unwelcome in Canada.

 

Biometrics has long been used in criminal proceedings, as well as in private and commercial transactions. But the infamy of September 11, 2001 ushered in greater concerns to control and secure the border from unwanted individuals. The U.S. Congress passed the Patriot Act in October 2011 requiring all foreign visitors to provide machine-readable, biometric travel documents, and put into place an entry-exit system to monitor movements to and from the country.

 

Next year, before newcomers are allowed to step into Canada, their biometric data will be checked to ensure that the individual who was approved to travel is in fact the same person who is entering Canada. The use of biometrics in immigration and border control will bring Canada up-to-date with other countries already using the system which includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, countries in the European Union Schengen Zone, Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia.

 

Biometrics are physiological or behavioral characteristics used to recognize or verify the identity of a living person. They are digital fingerprints and photographs that are to be embedded in a Canadian visa. Any one of the different types of biometric information can allow border security guards to make rapid and precise, one-to-one (authentication) or one-to-many (verification), identity checks.

 

There are, however, significant human rights ramifications inherent in the collection, processing and distribution of a person’s biometrics which creates hostility between public policy and the individual’s right to privacy. This friction is now at the heart of the biometrics debate.

 

Rebekah Thomas, an associate policy and research officer at the Global Commission on International Migration in Geneva and a specialist in international human rights law, has urged policy makers to look at the biometrics debate “from the migrants' perspective because the development of biometric technology is particularly discriminatory towards migrants, both in its application and its effect.”

 

In When Biometrics Fail: Gender, Race, and the Technology of Identity, Shoshana Amielle Magnet contends that very often these technologies fail to work. Magnet is an assistant professor in the Institute of Women’s Studies and the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Her study shows that at the moment when biometrics fail, these technologies prove that they work differently and fail to function more often, on women, people of colour, and people with disabilities. Prof. Magnet’s book evaluates the state’s use of biometrics to control and classify vulnerable and marginalized populations—including prisoners, welfare recipients, immigrants, and refugees—and to track individuals beyond a nation’s territorial boundaries.

 

Things that once seemed like science fiction are now easily usable and can be shared to track immigrants, criminals, welfare recipients or terrorists. In the United States, for example, DNA is now collected from almost anyone who comes in contact with the criminal justice system, and the expansion of DNA collection is becoming a real and serious threat because DNA has the potential to reveal so much information about an individual. The frontier is being stretched and we are not sure which areas could be next.

U.S.  Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham say that a federally issued
ID card with biometric information is necessary to curb illegal immigration to
the United States. Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFewUlszMTQ
 to view "The National Biometric ID Card: The Mark of the Beast?"

Critics of the use of biometrics in immigrant tracking suggest biometrics should enhance rather than conflict with individual privacy. That it should focus more on preventing identity theft and in providing increased anonymity for the user. Easier said than done because for the most part governments are more concerned with the security and welfare of the greater society rather than protecting an individual’s right to privacy. Privacy is a fundamental human right upheld under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and entrenched in almost every national law. But when it runs in conflict with the greater good such as the state’s security, privacy is usually trumped by public policy that aims to protect the state.

 

The right to privacy is usually assured through minimum guarantees that personalized computerized data will not be compromised. But these guarantees can be difficult to uphold in the case of biometrics because one of its weaknesses is lack of credibility, whether from error or their vulnerability to interference. When data, for instance, is transferred across different agencies and countries, there is a greater risk that it will trickle into more controversial areas of immigration control, such as tracking and surveillance. This is known as “function creep,” which means data is used for other purposes not foreseen or not consented to at that time it was collected.

 

Biometric measures are generally criticized for the tendency to discriminate against migrants, partly because of state policy to tackle illegal immigration and as an unavoidable consequence of their contact with borders. Immigrants from Third-World countries, for example those nationals from the 29 countries required by Canada Immigration to provide biometrics, are more likely to need visas for entry, and certain nationals and ethnic groups are deliberately targeted by immigration controls because of fear of terrorism and criminality.

 

For refugees and asylum seekers, or for just being included in the 29 countries required to provide biometrics, the process of having their biometric information collected may be a terrifying and traumatic experience. As earlier said, belonging to these 29 countries has a stigmatizing effect—the stigma of criminal activity attached to fingerprints or “mug shots,” for example.

 

Advocates of biometrics argue that these effects are unavoidable in order to ensure border security. Automation of identity checks and consequently raising the level of confidence in border security and immigration controls could reduce the negative myths and stereotypes about migrants and refugees. Traffickers would also be hindered in their attempts to use false identities.

 

Yet many of these biometric measures target nationals of particular countries who are also entitled to their fundamental human rights. Thus, it becomes more than doubly difficult to balance the policy of the state to secure its borders with the right of the individual to privacy.

 

A study made by the Global Commission on International Migration in Geneva shows scant evidence from the U.S. and the United Kingdom that biometric technology has contributed to reducing either terrorism or irregular migration. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, more than 200 persons have been arrested since the January 2004 launch of US-VISIT, a program that electronically tracks the entry and exit of foreign visitors using biographical information and biometric identifiers. Those arrested include “convicted rapists, drug traffickers, individuals convicted of credit card fraud, a convicted armed robber, and numerous immigration violators and individuals attempting visa fraud.” After processing over 2.5 million visitors, no terrorist suspects have been caught to date, and these statistics do nothing to change the numbers of migrants who enter legitimately, but who become irregular once inside the country.

 

Security and human rights, however, are not necessarily incompatible principles. The application of biometric technology can certainly operate within a context that reconciles the needs and rights of both the state and the individual. Achieving the right balance may be elusive at this early stage of biometric applications, but this doesn’t mean that we should give up on our rights to privacy.

 

Perhaps, the more sensible way is to approach immigration reform and anti-terrorism as two separate and distinct issues. There should be proportionality between biometric data collection and usage and privacy rights. This would make it easier to assess if the measures undertaken are effective enough to justify interference with privacy rights.

Whitewashing the truth

Plato said that “those who tell the stories also hold the power,” something that historical revisionists understand fully well. This is particularly true to those who would like to portray an illusion of a great presidency as in the case of Ferdinand Marcos and his almost twenty years of authoritarian rule. His immediate survivors who are now entrusted to keep the Marcos legacy alive like his wife Imelda and children Imee and Ferdinand Jr. are all in cahoots with historical revisionists who saw nothing despicably wrong with the iron-clad rule of Ferdinand Sr. from 1969 to 1986.

The same can be said for those who, on one hand, continue to glorify the outcome and moral impact of EDSA I on government and its leaders, and on the other, those who would like to demonize the military and the Church in installing Cory Aquino to an accidental position of president of the Republic after Marcos was driven out. Videos lampooning EDSA I and discrediting its achievements are circulating on YouTube and the Internet. But at the same time, the moderate media or so-called “yellow media” have become the anointed protectors of the legacy of EDSA I and they would not hesitate to inspire or instigate another public uproar should it be necessary to preserve that legacy or support a popular government even if it ignores the rule of law.

Both are clear examples of historical revisionism that attempt to erase the culpability of the martial law years under Marcos and the succeeding presidencies starting from Cory Aquino to her son Noynoy Aquino for government complicity in violating human rights and for instilling a culture of impunity.

Filipinos protest against military abuses of human rights, extrajudicial killings and
 disappearances. Photo by Magic Liwanag. Click link to view "Ending the culture of
impunity in the Philippines," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c24VJubiVv4

Martial law spawned corrupt system

G. Eugene Martin, U.S. Institute of Peace Executive Director of the Philippine Facilitation Project, in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs in 2007, pointed to the legacy of the Ferdinand Marcos regime as one palpable cause for the extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances of civil society activists. According to Martin, martial law created a corrupt system where soldiers, police, judges and prosecutors became principals of offences like extralegal arrest, detention, incarceration, disappearances and salvaging, are all permitted or allowed.

This is very evident in the military’s reliance on Proclamation No. 2054 of President Marcos despite the lifting of martial law on January 27, 1981 and the succession of democratically elected presidents after EDSA I which were supposed to obliterate the repressive laws of the martial law period. It is the same objective under that Proclamation “to prevent or suppress lawless violence, insurrection, rebellion and subversion” that prompts the military to continue launching pre-emptive strikes against alleged communists and their sympathizers, and terroristic enemies of the state. All this violence against the people is therefore considered justified, as the Marcos regime used it as a rationale for its repressive measures, under the aegis of preserving the Constitution as the supreme law of the land at all times.

So when Cory Aquino assumed the presidency in 1986, her pardon of the top military brass and its officers for complicity in the commission of crimes and offences against the people during the Marcos era prevented any criminal prosecution and those responsible were never brought to justice. This coddling of the military and the police by succeeding presidents did not only provide immunity for violators but also made military and police abuses of human rights the norm, instead of protecting civil society.

Thus, to the military and the police who are entrusted to protect the rights of civil society, extrajudicial killings and disappearances are justified and necessary to protect the state and preserve peace and order. That human rights might by necessity although unintentionally be trampled upon. This is the official line and is therefore what is reported in the media, the story that is being taught to our present generation of young people in schools. It all started with the Marcos era and the spate of violence and killings continues to be condoned as legitimate under the present government of Noynoy Aquino.

Extra-judicial killings and disappearances

Thus, proponents of historical revisionism have succeeded in demonizing the civil society instead of protecting it. The 2007 report by Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights, on extrajudicial killings and disappearances is a case in point.

Alston in his report identified two root causes of these killings: (1) vilification, labelling or guilt by association, i.e., the characterization of most groups on the left of the political spectrum as front organizations for armed groups whose aim is to destroy democracy making them as legitimate targets for military/police action, and (2) the government’s counter-insurgency strategy which has facilitated the killings of activists and others who oppose the government.

Alston’s report could very well be the official and most accurate narrative, an objective historical account of the underlying causes of violence perpetrated against the people by the military, the police and other agents of the government. However, the Philippine government denies this. There are no crimes of extrajudicial killings and disappearances, and that is the official line of the government. The government, therefore, has rewritten the history of violence against the people by continuously and flatly denying that crimes were committed despite independent third party findings of facts.

In 2006, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo created the Melo Commission to investigate the killings of militant activists and some members of the press. While concluding that most of the killings were instigated by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Melo Commission however found no proof to blame the government and the military. Instead, the Commission reiterated the dubious statements made by Task Force Usig of the Philippine National Police that the rise in the killings of activists and media personnel was due to the “purge” of the ranks of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA). Here we can see a clear effort by the government to whitewash the crimes committed by its military and to pin the responsibility for the killings of innocent civil society activists to the communist insurgency.

The Melo Commission Report and the statements made by Task Force Usig, including their suspicious statistics on atrocities committed by the military and by alleged underground groups, form part of the official history of political violence in the Philippines. Third party and independent investigations such as the Alston Report and the testimonies of experts on extrajudicial killings and disappearances from international human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, are considered by the government as mere observations not grounded on facts.

The U.S. State Department Report has also highlighted the fact that Philippine security forces have been responsible for serious human rights abuses, a report that is glossed over by the government. Even an observation from a friendly country and former colonial master failed to muster any clout, thus reducing it to an insignificant footnote to the official historical narrative of the government.

Deception and denial

Historical revisionists thus effectively use their twin techniques of deception and denial. Deception, by falsifying information, lying and obscuring the truth in order to manipulate information or opinion. Denial, by claiming facts are untrue, blame shifting, censorship, distraction and media manipulation. These are all self-evident in the government’s historical record of political violence against the people as contained in the Melo Commission Report and in all proclamations of the previous and present governments with regard to Oplan Bantay Laya and Oplan Bayanihan, both counter-insurgency programs of the government.

Holocaust memorial in San Francisco. Photo courtesy of Dubgael. Click link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIJYl7U4ksY to view "What is a crime
 against humanity?"

During the Nuremberg trials of the war crimes committed by Nazi regime, the prosecutors were faced with the problem of how to respond to the Holocaust and other grave crimes. At that time, a traditional understanding of war crimes did not include crimes committed by a power on its own citizens. So, a new charter was drafted not only to cover traditional war crimes and crimes against peace, but also crimes against humanity.

The Tokyo trials that followed Nuremberg also tried the leaders of the Japanese empire with these crimes against humanity, together with crimes against peace and war crimes. With the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, the Rome Statute has significantly broadened the definition of crimes against humanity from its original legal definition.

According to the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity are particularly odious offences that constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy or a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority.

One would therefore suspect that the Arroyo and Aquino governments are rewriting the history of political violence in the Philippines in order to avoid being brought before the ICC and be tried for crimes against humanity. Perhaps, the consolation to President Noynoy Aquino is that he still has the opportunity not to repeat the mistakes of his predecessors. However, if the signs are clear that Noynoy Aquino might have already chosen to continue painting a rosy picture of the history of violence against the people, thus denying and deceiving the truth, genuine history will not be so kind in remembering the grave political consequences of the illusions his government has attempted to nourish.