By - Lohith Chiluka & Dhruvika Sharma (Editors, VIT Today)
The government of Philippines is at the verge of enacting a counterterrorism law, which if enacted, will not only eliminate critical legal protections but will also allow the government to overreach against any group or individual that have been labelled as terrorists by the government. This law is a cause for concern as it most certainly toes the line of certain human rights.
But what is terrorism? When you strip it down to its bare essence, terrorism can be considered as the act of causing mental agony or bodily harm to someone, somewhere or something, often to serve a specific purpose.
The draft to the anti-terrorism act, however, uses an overbroad definition of terrorism that can subject suspects, apprehended without a warrant, to weeks of detention prior to an appearance before a judge. “The Anti-Terrorism Act is a human rights disaster in the making,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The law will open the door to arbitrary arrests and long prison sentences for people or representatives of organizations that have displeased the president.”
The problem also arises due to the misinterpretations and over-exaggerations done by the media. The minute an instance of terrorism hits our ears or is witnessed, social stigma and the status quo leads us, or at least a majority of the world to turn our eyes to ethnic groups that have some known connection to a certain group. The time has come that we break this status quo. Just because a certain known terrorist group practices a particular religion and claims to enact the principles of that specific religion doesn’t give us the liberty to interpret that all those who follow that religion have the plausible chance of turning to terrorism. In these perilous times, it is the duty of the media to portray the truth rather than simply dropping assertions and letting the common man derive his or her own assumptions.
It is quite well known that media pressure, regardless of how baseless it may be, has a certain amount of capacity to make the justice system work in the favor of popular opinion. This coupled with the Anti Terrorism Law of 2020, can convict an individual on the basis of a vague definition of “terrorism” making them face up to life in prison without parole. A law like this could easily be bent to the preference of the government and be targeted against already defamed minorities. Rampant racism or islamophobia would only fuel the ill-effects of this law.
More often than not, acts of terrorism leave a ripple effect. Some acts of terrorism create heroes and nationalists, while others simply lead to the rising of a new generation of possible extremists. It is fuelled with extreme violence and using violence to curb terrorism is similar to pouring water on a gasoline fire. This is why it is critical to understand what really entails terrorism and how it can be corrected from the grass-root instead.
To a little child, far away, in the middle of a country which coincidently turns out to be one in which terrorism seems to not only originate but also affects this country in itself, war means nothing. His life in its entirety revolves around his immediate surroundings and his parents. All of a sudden, a huge air/drone strike hits this particular neighbourhood because of the possibility of the presence of a known terrorist/terrorist group. Everything that the child knows as his own, is destroyed. His family, his friends, his home. At this point, the child is left raw with pain, disbelief and anger. Attributes which if left unattended to, end up being the perfect mold for the uprising of a new recruit for terrorism. A local militia leader finds him, molds him with extremist ideology, which when fuelled with the trauma and rage that he has felt since he was a child, turn him into a hardened man without reason. Wars breed casualties. Innocent casualties mostly. The war against Terrorism isn't any different. Maybe it's time that terrorism is dealt by a manner that doesn't leave it prone to fruition.
Comments