The full text of Chief Justice Reynato Puno’s commencement address at the University of the East graduation rites (yesterday i presume, the inquirer.net story doesn’t say when) has not been uploaded anywhere (not in the Supreme Court website nor anywhere in google) as of this posting. I got these excerpts from the article of Inquirer reporter Leila Salaverria in inq.net, i didn’t put the parts she paraphrased, only the direct quotes; and the bigger portions have been paraphrased. Let’s wait for the webmaster of the Supreme Court to report for work or to wake up.
Here are excerpts as quoted by Inquirer. There’s hope in this country with people like the Chief Justice.
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“Terrorism is terrible enough, but the mindless, knee-jerk reaction to extirpate the evil is more discomforting ….
“One visible result of the scramble to end terrorism is to take legal shortcuts and legal shortcuts always shrink the scope of human rights….
“These shortcuts have scarred the landscape of rights in the Philippines….
“To put constitutional cosmetics to the military-police muscular efforts, lawmakers usually enact laws using security of the state to justify the diminution of human rights by allowing arrests without warrants; surveillance of suspects; interception and recording of communications; seizure or freezing of bank deposits, assets and records of suspects. They also redefine terrorism as a crime against humanity and the redefinition is broadly drawn to constrict and shrink further the zone of individual rights….
“If there is any lesson that we can derive from the history of human rights, it is none other than these rights cannot be obliterated by bombs but neither can they be preserved by bullets alone… “The threats to our national security and human rights will be aggravated if we have a state, weakened internally by a government hobbled by corruption, struggling with credibility, battling the endless insurgence of the left and the right…
“A weak state cannot fully protect the rights of its citizens within its borders just as a state without economic independence cannot protect the rights of its citizens who are abroad from the exploitation of more powerful countries…
“In less polite parlance, the search and destroy strategy gave little respect to the sovereignty of states and violated their traditional borders…
“… (F)or laws are silent when the guns of war do the talking.
“In poor countries, it is poverty that truly terrorizes people for they are terrorized by the thought that they will die because of empty stomachs and not that they will lose their lives due to some invisible suicide bombers…
“To the unsophisticated in the esoterics of economics, this is a distinction without difference for the cruel fact is that poverty stalks this land of plenty and hunger is still the best food seasoning of its people,” he said.
“The apathy of those who can make a difference is the reason why violations of human rights continue to prosper. The worst enemy of human rights is not its non-believers but the fence sitters who will not lift a finger despite their violations…
“Sooner or later, they will find that they who default in protecting the rights of the many will end up without rights like the many…
“With the incursions and threats of incursion to our human rights at this crucial moment in our history, the clarion call to each one of us is to consecrate our lives to the great cause of upholding our human rights…” (WAITING FOR THE SUPREME COURT WEBMASTER TO UPLOAD THE SPEECH. THANK YOU.) |
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I don’t suppose it occurs to you that this speech is a gross violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct (Rule 5.10) against the making of political speeches by Judges? How can any prosecution now proceed using the Human Security Act of 2007 when no less than the Chief Justice has called the war on terror a mindless and knee jerk reaction? How can justice be brought to the beheaders of those seven innocent young filipinos by the Abu Sayyaf? Is this what you teach your students? That we can violate the law as long as we agree with the result?
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