March 28, 2007, GMA News, 'Freedom being lost in fight vs terror' - SC chief, [Chief Justice Reynato Puno]

March 28, 2007, GMA News, 'Freedom being lost in fight vs terror' - SC chief, [Chief Justice Reynato Puno] 

Chief Justice Reynato Puno on Tuesday admitted that Filipinos are losing their freedom because of the fight against terrorism as he expressed his reservations with the anti-terrorism law feared by many to undermine basic human rights and freedoms.

Without specifically mentioning the Human Security Act of 2007, the chief magistrate said the fight against terrorism must not come at the expense of basic freedoms, such as right to life, speech and liberty.

"Today, we are still slowly losing our freedoms in the fight against terrorism, in fighting an enemy without a face, in fighting battles without battle lines, in fighting a war without finality. We are also losing our God-given human rights -- to life, liberty and property -- to artificial persons like transnational corporations, whose empire of greed is gobbling up the world," he said in a speech delivered during the induction of officers of the Capampangan sa Media, Inc. (CAMI) on 27 March 2007 in Quezon City.

Puno said that people should be more wary of "faceless enemies" who come in the guise of saviors.

"The tragedy is that they are taking our freedoms on the pretext of giving us peace; the irony is that they are asking our freedoms to be sacrificed allegedly to bring us progress," Puno said.

"Tyranny is intolerable, but the worst tyrants are those who deny our freedom on the pretext of doing so to protect us; the unbearable tyrants are those who come in the habiliments of saviors. 

"This delusion destroys liberty, and almost always the first to go is freedom of speech and of the press." 

Saying that the freedom of the press and speech were two of the most suppressed rights, Puno recounted the various ways in which these were done throughout the Philippine history.

He noted that during the American occupation, the US forces checked their critics, especially those from the press, with "velvet hands and not with iron fists," thus they were silenced with the use of legal weapons through the filing of rebellion, sedition and libel charges.

During the martial law period, Puno said the late President Ferdinand Marcos became adept at using the Constitution to prolong his stay in Malacañang. 

"In the eyes of our legal historians, Marcos, the lawyer, was able to prolong his authoritarian regime through the adept use of the Constitution, which gave the President extra powers to deal with emergencies. Mainstream press was a casualty in the exercise of these extra powers," he said.

Puno said that Filipinos should take their lessons from their American counterparts, who also went through such crises in their history.

"Despite their triumphs, some legal scholars are now asking the disquieting question whether in the process of surviving their crises, too much freedom was denied the Americans. In other words, they are tortured by the thought that in times of crisis, their government has tilted the balance too much in favor of security and too little in favor of liberty," he said.

He took note of the words of US scholar Dean Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago law School, who claimed that the US Supreme Court applied constitutional standards that strongly accord the President and Congress the benefit of the doubt, while ruling against the liberty of the people. 

This antipathy of the US Supreme Court toward liberty was attributed by Stone to the excessive fear of the justices, characteristic of people gripped by excessive fear during crises, with the government subsequently overreacting, Puno said. 

"Dean Stone's piercing insights should also make us ponder on the restrictions we impose on our liberties, especially on freedom of speech and of the press, during national emergencies. We ought to pause, for the signs of the times say there will still be crises to visit us. We have glorified freedom of speech and of the press as a preferred freedom, occupying a higher rung in the hierarchy of constitutional values," he said. - GMANews.TV