NOBEL LAUREATE SUPPORTS PERMANENT PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL 2ND SESSION ON RP

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Most Rev. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, is one of the several supporters of the 2nd Session on the Philippines of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) –- where the Arroyo regime, the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (IMF-WB), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and multinational corporations are facing charges for gross violations of civil and political rights, economic plunder and ecological destruction, and transgression of the Filipino peoples’ sovereignty.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat



Nobel Peace Prize Winner Most Rev. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, is one of the several supporters of the 2nd Session on the Philippines of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) –- where the Arroyo regime, the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (IMF-WB), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and multinational corporations are facing charges for gross violations of civil and political rights, economic plunder and ecological destruction, and transgression of the Filipino peoples’ sovereignty.

“I wholeheartedly support the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the Philippines in their noble cause and pray that all of us through them will succeed in this pursuit of justice and peace in the Philippines!” Tutu said in his message of endorsement sent to the PPT.

“Our brothers and sisters in the Philippines who are fighting for justice and well-being for all…are being slaughtered as we speak!” he said.

“Stop the terror inflicted on those who seek justice in your land,” he also called on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. “Stop using the so-called war against terrorism to oppress and kill your own people!”

Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. He had risen to world fame in the previous decades as a vocal opponent of apartheid. He is also a recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and, in 1986, was given the Magubela Prize for Liberty. In 2005, he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize.

He is also known as an anti-AIDS activist and has served as honorary chairman of the Global AIDS Alliance.

Other endorsers

Other prominent endorsements came from 2005 Right Livelihood Award (alternative Nobel) recipient and National Chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Ms. Maude Barlow; 2005 Right Livelihood Award recipient and founder of the Polaris Institute, Tony Clarke, PhD; World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) official, Cardinal Uwishaka of Mozambique; Prof. Dr. Yong Bock-Kim of the Presbyterian Church of Korea; Secretary General Tang Shu of the Labor Party of Taiwan; Legislator Kao Su-Mei Chin of the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union of Taiwan; Japanese international affairs expert and Peace Research Institute director, Professor Kinhide Mushakoji; and Professor (Elizabeth) Jane Kelsey of the ARENA Network – Aotearoa / New Zealand.

The Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Center, through Secretary General Hisako Motoyama, has expressed solidarity with the Filipino people “in their fight against brutal powers.” The world’s largest grassroots environmental network, Friends of the Earth International, also sent its endorsement for the Tribunal session on the Philippines.

The PPT’s Second Session on the Philippines opened on March 22 in The Hague, The Netherlands. The PPT is expected to deliver its verdict this March 25.

The petition for the PPT’s Second Session on the Philippines was filed by: Hustisya (Justice), an organization of human rights victims under the Arroyo administration and their relatives; Desaparecidos, a group of relatives of victims of enforced disappearances; Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainee Laban sa Detensyon at para sa Amnestiya (SELDA or Society of Ex-Detainees Against Detention and for Amnesty); and the multi-sectoral Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance).

1980

The PPT heard the case of the Filipino people against the Marcos regime and the U.S. government in 1980 in Antwerp, Belgium. The jury found the Marcos dictatorship “guilty of grave economic and political crimes against his own people and against the Bangsa Moro people,” and declared Marcos “unfit to govern and subject to severe punishment for his offenses.” It also recognized the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and the Moro National Liberation Front), which had filed the 1980 charges, as “the legitimate representatives” of the Filipino and Moro peoples, respectively.

The Member Jurors of the PPT First Session on the Philippines were: Sergio Mendes Arceo, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Guernavaca, Mexico; Richard Baumlin, Swiss legal scholar and parliamentarian; Harvey Cox, professor of theology at Harvard University and author of the book Secular City; Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University and noted environmentalist; Andrea Giardina, professor of international law at the University of Naples; Francois Houtart, professor of sociology at the University of Louvain; Ajit Roy, Indian writer; Makoto Oda; Ernst Utrecht, professor at Sidney University and a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam; George Wald, Nobel Prize winner and president of the First Session on the Philippines; Muireann O’ Brian, Irish lawyer; and Gianni Tognoni, coordinator of the First Session on the Philippines.

The Marcos dictatorship was eventually ousted from power by a popular uprising in February 1986.

Jurors

Falk, Houtart, and Oda are also serving as Jurors in the PPT Second Session on the Philippines. The other Jurors are: Lilia Solano (Colombia), a 2005 Right Livelihood Awardee, professor of Social and Political Sciences at the National University in Bogota, Director of the Project for Life and Peace, and a member of the National Movement of Victims ofState-Sponsored Crimes; Oystein Tveter (Norway), a lawyer and former director of the Karibu Foundation, an organization helping to rehabilitate child war victims in Rwanda; Ties Prakken, a Dutch human rights lawyer and professor of Criminal Law at Maastricht University; and Irene Fernandez, Malaysian trade unionist, women and consumer rights advocate, and a founding member of the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD). Bulatlat