Finding the voice

By Atty. Eduardo T. Reyes III

 

Just a week after the US Supreme Court came down with a landmark decision upholding LGBTQ rights to be within the purview of its Civil Rights Act that eschews discrimination; locally, a group of LGBTQ protesters was arrested in Manila last June 26th for holding a rally decrying the Anti-Terror Bill.

They denounced the arrest as illegal because for them, the exercise was within the limits of free speech. As reports would have it, the grounds for arrest were disobedience of person in authority in relation to Republic Act 11332, otherwise known as the Law on Reporting of Communicable Diseases, and Batas Pambansa 880, otherwise known as Public Assembly Act.

Incidents like those of the June 26^th rally always raise worrying questions on the legitimacy of the actions of arresting officers. If reports are true that the grounds for the arrest are an unholy alliance of:  disobedience of person in authority in relation to Republic Act 11332, otherwise known as the Law on Reporting of Communicable Diseases, and Batas Pambansa 880, otherwise known as the Public Assembly Act, then there is something terribly wrong with the arrest.

It is true that Batas Pambansa 880, otherwise known as Public Assembly Act, punishes the holding of a rally without a permit. But the criminal liability is incurred only by the “leader” or “organizer” and not by a mere participant or attendee pursuant to its Section 4 in relation to Section 13(a).

Neither will the joining of a protest rally be in breach of Republic Act No. 11332 or the Quarantine Law as the only “punishable acts” in Section 9 of the law are as follows:

(a)  Unauthorized disclosure of private and confidential information pertaining to a patient’s medical condition or treatment;

(b)   Tampering of records or intentionally providing misinformation;

(c)    Non-operation of the disease surveillance and response systems;

(d)   Non-cooperation of persons and entities that should report and/or respond to notifiable diseases or health events of public concern; and

(e)  Non-cooperation of the person or entities identified as having the notifiable disease, or affected by the health event of public concern.

None of these punishable acts were performed by the protesters according to the reports. The closest perhaps would be para. (d) or the “Non-cooperation of persons and entities that should report and/or respond to notifiable diseases or health events of public concern”; and yet, still, almost but not quite, as there was no showing that any of them were infected with COVID-19 and that they posed as a danger of contaminating anyone.

And last and more important, it would be skewed to arrest protesters for disobedience to a person in authority under Article 151 of the Revised Penal Code should they refuse to cooperate with authorities who will disperse them during the rally. What the said law punishes is the act of any person “who shall resist or seriously disobey any person in authority, or the agents of such person, while engaged in the performance of official duties”. This is an absurd arrest because if a person is not committing a crime and the police will arrest him/ her, then the resistance is done in the legal defense of one’s self. And defending oneself from being illegally arrested is not a crime- it is even a right.

Thus to say that they are liable for “resisting arrest” is the equivalent of putting the cart before the horse.

The general rule is that citizens have the right to peaceably assemble to seek redress of grievances against their government and the limits to its exercise are rare and must be sufficiently justified.

It has been emphasized by teachings of jurisprudence that more than a right, it is a citizen’s duty to call out the government to air grievances. That the vastness of freedom of speech and expression is almost measureless unless a valid law reasonably corrals it in. Political issues are better ventilated when the credo is “to allow more speech” as it is by the free exchange of ideas that society learns and improves rather than by forced silence in order to create a chimera of law and order.

Constitutional freedoms are amorphous and it is when the people are inert in the face of curtailment that the abridgment of these freedoms is most perpetrated with impunity.

The people must find their voice even in the midst of a health emergency.

(Atty. Eduardo T. Reyes, III is the senior partner of ET Reyes III & Associates- a law firm based in Iloilo City. He is a litigation attorney, a law professor and a law book author. His website is etriiilaw.com).