We cannot afford to just shut our eyes and be heedless to the savage assault on September 11 of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, wherein scores of innocent citizens perished. All civilized societies must pause to reflect on the panorama of horror and loss that the attack resulted to, and thus to condemn in the loudest and most outraged voice such dastardly act of the perpetrators. We join the human race in mourning the aggression of rightness and reason by iniquity and revenge. We grieve alongside all peoples of the world over this last show of man's inhumanity to man. We denounce terrorism in the highest terms, and regardless of who commits it and for what cause it is done.
And precisely because of the abhorrence we have for any kind of 'terrorist' actions, we reject the US government's declaration of war and its call upon other governments of the world to support or be a party to its planned military retaliation. We cannot agree that a military offensive against the attackers, the identity of whom has not been absolutely and conclusively proven as yet, will be able to arrest the sheer rage and violence fuelling terrorism. War will not cure the illnesses, which grip societies. On the contrary, war - its daily images and expressions, has been causing the madness that plunges the human race into ceaseless darkness and despair.
We appeal to the US government to withhold its military might and instead divert its smoldering energies to soul-searching and self-examination. For certainly, it will take immense power to look inward and contemplate on the possibility that the vulnerability of America, whether from real terrorists or from nations badly hurt from its government's disposition and policy actions on crucial international issues, is a condition that did not happen in a vacuum. Since it ascended to world dominance after the Second World War, governments that undermined the rights and aspirations of other nations have led the American people into what they have become today: hapless targets and victims of various acts of retribution. Although no reason justifies the carnage of our fellow human beings in America, we say the same thing for those who stand to suffer the ire of the US government when it unleashes its war that will raze down anything that moves within the territories of their perceived enemies.
Because we are a part of the human rights movements across the globe, we believe that humanity's efforts in past history cannot just go to waste once war erupts. We have to do whatever it takes to preserve and uphold the efforts of our fellow human beings who lived before us. It rests upon our shoulders to continue fighting for the ideals of our fellow advocates for world peace when they inspired or have become prime movers of the forging of the international humanitarian law that took generations to build and strengthen. It will be the height of mockery if a Third World War should begin, demolishing humanitarian law and slaughtering the human rights of the citizens of the world, all of which embody the noble ideals that World War II brought into existence. The Second World War ended with the world's governments and nations coming together and vowing to avoid at all cost conflicts that will lead to war. This is why in the ruins and amidst humanity's grief following World War II, the United Nations came to being where nations licked their wounds and tried to move on by creating numerous international and regional instruments that will safeguard the nations against all forms of violence and aggression, the most brazen expression of which is war.
While we grieve and muster our strength and courage to rise above the recent tragedy that befell America, let us call on our own governments to lead us safely away from further tragedy, and not to hurl us right into it. In this light, we warn our own President Gloria Arroyo who was one of the earliest to express her government's unequivocal support in the wake of US President George Bush's "saber rattling" pronouncements to go to war.
We brush aside any argument that the GMA government will use in order to re-activate the US bases in the country for the purposes of possible US attacks on its targets. The Philippine Constitution, in its Declaration of Principles and State Policies, explicitly renounces war as an instrument of national policy. It is also with deference to this Constitutional provision that the acceptability of the presence of the US bases in the country has been categorically and resoundingly cast off by the people and by our lawmakers in 1992. The basic and the most brilliant, and thus, the best reasons have then been given for abandoning the role of playing host to the bases. To be faithful and true to such historic decision and its implications in letter and spirit means we must repudiate any act or framework that will be defeating or contradicting it; this includes the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement, or any other instrumentality that will compromise the sovereignty and safety of the nation.
As we support our senators and representatives in their current effort to make judgement and reason prevail in our Congress with regard to the threat of war, we further warn President Arroyo of the far-reaching effects that the possibility of our involvement in a war would give rise to. This early, unusually large contingents of police forces are being deployed in Filipino Muslim communities in Metro Manila. As a result, cases of harassment have been reported by media and by the documentation teams of various NGOs in the country. Simmering tensions between Muslims and Christians in communities where they co-exist are at risk of intensifying. In Mindanao, 12 NGOs providing services to a Muslim clientele based in the region were reportedly placed in police watch list on suspicion that their funding comes from the coffers of foreign organizations under the auspices of Osama Bin Laden.
We are concerned that our fear of the faceless fanatical enemies of peace and democracy would unwittingly push us to seek refuge in the shelter of racial persecution against Muslim Filipinos. This will make us unthinking, ranting and bloodthirsty zealots ourselves. We are concerned that as we sink deeper into war consciousness, human rights violations will escalate, worsening forcible arrests, abductions and involuntary disappearances. While human rights violations have shown one of its most ruthless faces in the phenomenon of involuntary disappearance, a scenario where the country is caught in war increases in manifold terms the conditions under which the victims and their families will suffer involuntary disappearance.
In the days ahead, we wish fervently for more sober public opinion not only in the country but worldwide to take the lead in clarifying the event that shocked the world in the morning of September 11. We wish that other voices would speak and redefine the heartbreaking disaster, from first impression reactions that it was simply an issue of terrorism versus anti-terrorism. We hope that there will be more of us in the human race who will take the option of opening our hearts and minds, not only to the most preponderant point of view the media blares and which easily find its way in and takes hold of grassroots society. We hope more people will decide to see the view from the other side and listen to the opinions at the margins, which may be just as true. Only in seeking to understand the whole picture of the tragedy and in knowing what response will be best, not for just one interest but for all, can we avoid the war. Only in clinging to the process of committing ourselves to the whole, not partial truth, can civilization survive the forces of death and destruction.
We contribute our little voice as a human rights organization and declare that what we want is justice and not revenge for the victims of the recent atrocity committed against America. Beyond the parameters of justice, there is no other way that the human race could go and still survive. Unless we have decided to meet the end of humanity, no voice of reason can prevail.
