The International Indigenous Peoples Movement for
Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) joins Indigenous
Peoples, human rights defenders, and peoples’ movements
around the world today, July 3, in the Global Day of
Action vs Terror Laws, marking the sixth
anniversary of the signing of the Philippines’
Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (Republic Act No. 11479) and
coming a day after the close of the United Nations’
Global Counter-Terrorism Week(June
26–July 2, 2026), during which UN member states concluded
the ninth review of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism
Strategy.
“Six years of the Anti-Terrorism
Act in the Philippines, twenty years of the UN’s own
counter-terrorism strategy and Indigenous Peoples (IP) are
still burying leaders, still watching our organizations’
bank accounts frozen, still on trial for organizing our own
communities. These laws were never built to protect us. They
were built to clear us out of the way of the mine, the dam,
and the plantation. We are not terrorists. We are the last
line of defense for the land these governments have already
sold,” Beverly Longid, IPMSDL Co-convener said.
When
Rodrigo Duterte signed the Republic Act No. 11479 or
Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) into law on July 3, 2020, and
twenty years after the UN itself adopted its Global
Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the record shows that this
counter-terrorism architecture has been far more effective
at criminalizing Indigenous Peoples, land defenders, and
critics than at addressing the roots of violence.
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This
year’s review resolution passed only after a rare recorded
vote with 140 in favor, 3 against (the United States,
Israel, and Argentina), and 1 abstention. The U.S.
called the review “not fit for purpose” and Israel
dismissed it as “outdated and repetitive.” CSOs and
the UN’s
own Special Rapporteur on human rights and
counter-terrorism raised concerns about the abuse of terror
laws against IP, minorities, and human rights
defenders.
When Duterte signed ATA, an outpour of 37
petitions against it were forwarded before the Supreme
Court and condemnation from IP, the Bangsamoro Parliament,
church leaders, and international bodies.
Six
years on, those warnings have been borne out in the
lives of IP leaders and communities.
Windel Bolinget,
chairperson of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and
IPMSDL ICC member, and fellow CPA leaders Jennifer
Awingan-Taggaoa, Sarah Abellon-Alikes, and Stephen Tauli
were designated as “terrorists” by the Anti-Terrorism
Council (ATC) in 2023, without judicial hearing, based on
undisclosed “evidence.” The designation froze CPA’s
bank accounts and funds for community social services and
disaster relief, and exposed the four leaders to warrantless
arrest and detention without charge.
The same script
is repeating: as imperialist powers and capitalism’s
hunger for land, minerals, water, and energy intensifies,
states and governments are reaching for
“counter-terrorism” and “national security” laws not
to stop community aerial bombings, but to clear IP, farmers
and grassroots communities off the resources they have lived
with and protected for centuries.
The IPMSDL rejects
the false choice between “security” and
self-determination.
The real threat to peace in
ancestral territories has never been IP. Rather, they are
defending their land and standing up for their rights. It is
the big mining and extractives company, the mega-dam and
energy projects, the multi-million pipeline consortium,
colonial conservation, and the state military and police
apparatus deployed to guarantee their access.”
Thus,
our need to repeal ATA (2020), abolish
the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed
Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and denounce similar legislations
around the world: India’s UAPA, U.S. state-level critical
infrastructure statutes, Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act,
Indonesia’s terrorism-law designation of West Papuan
resistance, Cambodia’s LANGO, and similar frameworks in
Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts, New Zealand, and
Australia that have been used to criminalize Indigenous
Peoples and environmental defenders!
We call for the
immediate and unconditional release, the right to a fair,
speedy trial of all political prisoners, and rights
defenders detained under terrorism and security laws for
their work.
Above all, we call for an end to the
criminalization of self-determination struggles. The defense
of ancestral land, waters, and life is not terrorism. It is
a right and it is
just.#
