3. The charges
The PPT has been presented with the following three charges against:
The Government of the Republic of the Philippines, and its President Mrs Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; the Government of the United States of America and its President Mr George Walker Bush for :
1. Gross and systematic violations of civil and political rights: extra-judicial killings, abduction and disappearances, massacre, torture;
2. Gross and systematic violation of economic, social and cultural rights;
3. Gross and systematic violations of the rights to national self-determination and liberation.
4. Historical framework and violation of economic, social and cultural rights
Since 1980, the year of the first session of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal on the Philippines, the socio-economic situation of the country has not changed, except for the worse. Even at that time, the jury of the Tribunal had denounced the unequal character of the economic system structured for the benefit of the domestic elite and foreign interests. It had also condemned the dominant economic and political role of the United States of America in the Philippines and in the region, through the implementation of an imperialist policy.
Today, almost 30 years later, or after almost one generation, the majority of the Filipino people (the peasants, fisherfolk, workers, oddjobbers, low-paid professionals) remain deprived of their basic rights to physical, social and cultural life. It is particularly painful to discover the figures collected from official sources, showing that a minority of Filipinos are absorbing the greatest part of the collective wealth of the nation, together with transnational enterprises, when we remember that behind each number there is a person – a child, an adult or an old person, a man or a woman.
In the Philippines, out of 87 million people, 65 million Filipinos (80% of the population) struggle to survive on less than US$2 per day while 46 million go hungry each day. The situation is deteriorating: since 2000, average family incomes have dropped 10%. The majority of the poor are in rural areas (70 %). Such a situation affects in particular the children. Infant mortality went from 24 per thousand in 1990 to 14 in 1998 and 40 in 2003. One fourth of the children under 10 years of age or 6.1 million children are underweight.
This is not the fruit of hazard, but it is the logical result of a policy. The first session of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal in 1980 coincided with the beginning of the neo-liberal phase of monopoly capitalism (the Washington Consensus), where in order to solve a crisis of accumulation, it was decided to enlarge and force open markets, decreasing the share of labour in the national income, privatizing public services and establishing a growing freedom of circulation of capital, goods and services. Such a policy, backed by the international financial and commercial institutions (World Bank, IMF, WTO) has been offering to the dominant powers and social classes the possibility of ruling the world according to their specific interests.
This is also happening in the Philippines. The share of labor in national income has fallen from 60 % in 1979 to 37 % in 2004 and the increase of corporate profits has been impressive: between 2001 and 2004, the income of the top 1000 enterprises grew from US2.3 billion to 10.0 billion. Minimum wage has been falling behind rising cost of living, the wage gap increasing 44% between 2001 and 2005. Unemployment is on the rise, with displaced workers for instance increasing by 52% between 2004 and 2005. In rural areas, tenanted and leasehold farms have increased from 48% of total farms in 1971 to 52% in 2004.
Extrajudicial Killings
