Arroyo will go down in history like Marcos

A Joint Press Statement by HUSTISYA, SELDA and DESAPARECIDOS
March 26, 2007

Spread the word, Gloria Arroyo and her government is guilty of crimes against the Filipino people.  She is set to go down in history like the Dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

We, the complainants who made the appeal to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal to hear our charges versus Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, are happy with the tribunal’s verdict.

We are proven correct in our belief that only a body independent of Arroyo’s influence and political clout can come out with a strong verdict unlike in the Philippines where the judiciary is subjugated by the whims of the Executive Office and rendered useless by state terrorism.

We are very much elated with the verdict, even if we know that it will not directly result to the arrest of Arroyo and her supporters. But as she is condemned by the world as a criminal and as perpetrator of these human rights violations, for us victims, we are given hope, a glimmer of the light of justice.  Like Marcos, she has sown terror and fear among the people, and now she will reap the condemnation of the Filipino people and the world.  This is the beginning of her regime’s end.

She and her cohorts may have prevented the truth from coming out when she successfully blocked two impeachment trials, but they had no way to stop the glaring evidence against her in an international opinion court. Now, the truth is out, and the whole world will know about her crimes: the extrajudicial killings, abductions and enforced disappearances, massacres, illegal arrests and arbitrary detention, attacks against the communities, attacks on peasants, workers, women and children.

The Marcos dictatorship was also tried and found guilty by the PPT in 1980, before it was finally ousted in 1986.

We will now bring the results of the PPT to the wider public, in the country and abroad.  And we will also find more venues to bring our cases against Arroyo, Bush and their supporters.

Our testimonies and evidences were sufficiently heard by the international tribunal that found the Arroyo regime along with the government of US Pres. George W. Bush guilty for violations of political, economic and cultural rights and the people’s right to self-determination.