Safeguards in place to prevent abuse – Ferro

Police Brigadier General Albert Ignatius Ferro. | CDN Digital File Photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines — There is no way that the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 will be subject to abuse.

Police Brigadier General Albert Ignatius Ferro, director of Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7), said that the law has more than enough safeguards to make sure that this will not violate human rights as feared by progressive groups in the country.

“This anti-terrorism law is not anti protesters or anti-civil rights activists. This law is about those that have been fighting the government for the last decades who have been extorting and burning government equipment… Those who have been supporting violence,” he said in a teleconference with Cebu reporters on Saturday, July 4, 2020.

Read: Progressive groups in Cebu condemn Anti-Terrorism Law of 2020

Various groups have asked President Rodrigo Duterte to repeal the law and focus instead on the campaign against the coronavirus disease 2019.

Read: Group tells Duterte to repeal ATB, prioritize COVID-19 response

On the contrary, Ferro said that the anti-terror law aims to protect the community from “the decade-long enemy of the government who continue to extort, abuse, and bring harm among their fellow citizens.”

Ferro said that those who do not support any acts of terrorism should not be afraid.

He added that the new law respects the right to speech that is specified in the Philippine Constitution.  It does not also mention of prohibitions against the conduct of protests.

“It’s a very much long-awaited law that would help the counter-terrorism unit of the Philippine authority… For me, the anti-terrorism bill is one of the best laws that has been procured to shoot the needs of our security forces here in our country,”  the PRO-7 director said.  / dcb