NEWS RELEASE
5 November 2007

“HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED

IN THE NETHERLANDS?!”

International jurors criticize Dutch government for confiscating Tribunal documents

(Amsterdam, 05 November) – “Shame on the Dutch government,” thus stressed former Norwegian ambassador Atty. Øystein Tveter, and one of the jurors during the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) second session on the Philippines held in March this year in the Hague.

Atty. Tveter was referring to the 28 August arrest of Filipino political refugee Prof. Jose Ma. Sison by Dutch police, and the simultaneous break-ins on the office of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) and six homes of Filipino political refugees living in the Netherlands. On orders from Dutch prosecutors, police carted away voluminous information and documents, including materials belonging to the Tribunal.

“The PPT jurors never thought that they would also hold the Dutch government responsible for the harassment (of Filipino militants) and the abuse of fundamental rights (of the Filipino people),” Tveter said.

Tveter was in Amsterdam on 3 November to help launch the book “Repression and Resistance”, which documents the Tribunal's session and verdict on the violations of civil, political and economic rights in the Philippines. The Tribunal delivered a guilty verdict against both the governments of Gloria Arroyo and George W. Bush of the US.

Other Tribunal jurors present at the book launch were Prof. Ties Prakken of the Netherlands and Secretary General Gianni Tognoni, MD, of Italy. Also gracing the occasion were a member of the prosecution team, Atty. Bernard Tomlow of the Netherlands, and a representative of the initiating organizations, Antonio Tujan, Jr. of IBON Foundation.

Documents, CDs and DVDs, flash disks and hard disks belonging to the Tribunal were carted away by Dutch police on 28 August, in connection with the trumped-up charge of “incitement to murder” against the NDFP's Prof. Sison. Tribunal officials and observers fear that information gathered from these materials will be used against witnesses who testified against the Manila and US governments. Dutch Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin has already admitted that such information can be shared to any foreign government if it will serve the interests of his government.

Commenting on the trumped-up case filed by Dutch prosecutors against Prof. Sison, law expert Prof. Prakken said the message of the court of appeals (in rejecting the appeal of the prosecutors to keep Sison in detention) is clear: drop the case! She said it is really unfortunate that Sison is being criminalized in the Netherlands on the basis of evidence which are not even acceptable to the Philippine Supreme Court.

Providing a brief background on the Tribunal's March 2007 session on the Philippines, Atty. Tomlow stressed that majority of Filipinos still exist on less than US$2 dollars per day. Comparing this situation during the Marcos dictatorship in the 1980s, he said that very little has changed in the lives of Filipinos.

During the book launch program, Secretary General Tognoni also paid tribute to Oda Makoto, one of the Tribunal's founders and jurors, who passed away 30 July. He read passages from Oda's books and echoed his call “to amplify the situation in the Philippines”. Tognoni said, “the verdict of the Tribunal represent the resistance of the powerless”.

The Tribunal's verdict has a strong impact on the Arroyo regime, stressed Tujan, Jr. Although the extrajudicial killings have not really stopped, the state forces are shifting to other means such as enforced disappearances to mitigate international criticisms.

The Amsterdam launching of “Repression and Resistance” was attended by Filipino migrants as well as representatives of Philippine solidarity associations. According to Dr. Angie Gonzales, secretariat coordinator for the Tribunal's second session on the Philippines, the book will also be promoted in several other cities in Europe and in the US, Canada and the Asia-Pacific, to drum up further support for the campaign to stop rights violations by the Arroyo and Bush governments. ###

For Reference:
Angelica M. Gonzales, MD

Executive Director, International Coordinating Secretariat

Permanent Peoples' Tribunal Second Session on the Philippines

Postbus 1584

3500 BN Utrecht

The Netherlands

secretariat@philippinetribunal.org

info@philippinetribunal.org

www.philippinetribunal.org

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