Filipino environmental defenders and climate activists petitioning for the withdrawal of the Anti-Terrorism Bill just launched an online platform to ‘hound’ lawmakers who voted for the recently passed legislation with dangerous authoritarian provisions.
The petition signed by more than 2,600 environmental defenders representing 177 environmental groups can now be signed and delivered by netizens from the safety of their homes directly to the email addresses of their district or partylist representative through the online action platform of climate activist group 350.org Pilipinas at https://350.org/junkterrorbill.
This can be done in just three easy steps:
1. Enter your information. This will not be used for anything except to ascertain that our participants are real people.
2. Click on the drop-down menu. A list of all legislators who voted ‘YES’ will appear. Select the district or party-list congressman representing your locality or your sector.
3. Click ‘Sign Up’ to immediately send a copy of the petition to the legislator.
“We invite our fellow concerned citizens to make themselves heard by their very own district or party-list representatives. Demand our legislators to withdraw their support for this ‘Terror Bill’ that endangers the lives of environmental defenders protecting our forests, seas, and climate,” said Chuck Baclagon, coordinator of 350.org Pilipinas.
Environmental groups have documented at least 172 environmental defenders who suffered human rights abuses such as red-tagging, illegal arrests, and the denial of humanitarian release from jail during the first two months of the COVID lockdown.
More attacks are feared if the law pushes through alongside dangerous economic policies railroaded under the guise of COVID recovery.
“Duterte seeks economic stimulus from Build, Build, Build infrastructure like the Kaliwa Dam and the Manila Bay Aerotropolis, to the business as usual of mines like Oceanagold in Nueva Vizcaya and TechIron in Homonhon. The Terror Bill will institutionalize the human rights abuses already affecting defenders opposed to these projects,” said Leon Dulce, national coordinator of Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE), one of the initiators of the petition.
A number of lawmakers, such as Albay Representative Joey Salceda, have already begun withdrawing their support for the bill after widespread online and on-the-ground public protests by activists, academe, legal luminaries, and celebrities.
Opponents of the widely criticized policy have noted that if at least 20 legislators withdrew their affirmative votes for the Terror Bill, the law will lose its simple majority of possible votes.
#JunkTerrorBillNow
#DefendTheDefenders