THE approval of House Bill 6875, or the new Anti-Terrorism Bill, is anticipated with apprehension and fear by the local labor sector.
General Alliance of Workers Associations (Gawa) Secretary General Wennie Sancho, in a press conference in Bacolod City Thursday, June 4, said if this bill becomes a law, it will have a chilling effect on labor activists.
Sancho said anyone can be tagged as a "suspected terrorist" due to the vague definition of terrorism.
"This might give law enforcers and authorities greater powers that could subject anyone to grave human rights violation and abuses," he said, adding that "the anti-terrorism bill is terror in itself."
Voting 173-31 with 29 abstentions, the House of Representatives approved the new anti-terrorism bill despite protests held by some activists and human rights groups on Wednesday.
House Bill 6875 was passed just a couple of days after President Rodrigo Duterte certified it as urgent and asked Congress to address the "urgent need to strengthen the law on anti-terrorism."
House Bill 6875 will repeal the Human Security Act of 2007. It was copied from Senate Bill 1038, which the Senate passed on third and final reading in February 2020.
With the House approval of a bill that merely adopted an approved Senate measure, there would no longer be any bicameral conference and the final bill would be submitted to President Duterte for approval.
The local labor sector also expressed apprehension that the bill might be used to intimidate, silence and jail critics and labor activists, political dissenters and critical media.
Sancho, also the labor representative to the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB) in Western Visayas, said this would also endanger the freedom of the press and expression.
Sancho said those political dissenters and leftist who are critical of the government might be labeled as "enemies of the state."
"Labor is apprehensive that this anti-terror bill might no longer distinguish the dividing line between legitimate dissent and subversion or the difference between commentaries on armed struggle and advocacy on it," he said, adding that patriotism and nationalism might be mistaken as treason.
For the labor sector, the legislation is also untimely as the country is confronted by the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.
Hernane Braza, national president of Philippine Agricultural, Commercial and Industrial Workers Union (Paciwu), said the anti-terrorism bill is a direct violation to the constitution.
Braza, also a labor representative to RTWPB-Western Visayas, said the constitution states that "you cannot be jailed without due process" which this bill does not have.
"Given this anti-terror bill, there's no longer a hearing. Meaning, you can be arrested immediately," he said, adding that "after that, you cannot file arbitrary detention once authorities committed an error during the arrest."
The push for such legislation is a form of taking advantage of the situation as the global pandemic still prevails, the labor leaders also lamented.