There is no basis in law to prohibiting protest rallies and demonstrations in the Philippines during the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, lawyer group says.
The group Concerned Lawyers for Civil Liberties criticized the arrests of activists made by the police who used prevailing quarantine protocols as grounds.
On June 5, police arrested three students, four members of activist groups, and a bystander while staging a protest rally inside a university in the central Philippine city of Cebu.
In Quezon City, six jeepney drivers, including a 72-year-old man, were arrested over alleged violation of the prohibition against “non-essential” mass gatherings.
The lawyers said the arrests “have no legal basis” in the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which was enacted to grant the president additional authority to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
The lawyers said the law “does not prohibit rallies nor contains provisions allowing the police to arrest people on the alleged violation of mass gathering rules.”
“It is a well-entrenched rule that penal laws are to be construed strictly against the state and liberally in favor of the accused,” the lawyers said in a statement.
“They are not to be extended or enlarged by implications, intendments, analogies, or equitable considerations. They are not to be strained by construction to spell out a new offense, enlarge the field of crime or multiply felonies,” read the statement.
The lawyers stressed that the “legally baseless arrests are worsened” when the so-called rules are “discriminatory implemented” to ordinary citizens but not to influential people or people in the government.
The group said the arrests of the students inside the campus in Cebu was not only unnecessary but also in direct contravention of an agreement between the University of the Philippines and the Department of National Defense in 1989 that “prohibits military and police presence in any UP campus without authorization from the UP administration.”
The lawyers lambasted the state security forces’ attempt to justify their entry into the campus by saying that it was a “hot pursuit.”
“A hot pursuit presupposes the commission of the crime,” the lawyers said. “A peaceful protest is not a criminal act.”
The group said that the national police violated several laws when they “interfered” in the peaceful assembly and arrested protesters.
They called on the police “to desist from arresting people exercising their constitutional rights to freedom of expression and petition government for a redress of grievances.”
The lawyers offered to provide legal services to “defend” the arrested protesters and “prosecute” those who commit illegal arrests.
“Time and again, the behavior of the police reminds us to remain vigilant and to be mindful of our rights,” the group said.
The lawyers reminded authorities that a peaceful gathering to address the government for grievances is “provided by no less than the Constitution, and violently dispersing such mass actions are deplorable, inhumane, and deeply violative of the law.”
