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MAYOR BABA HINTS BLACKLISTING HUMABOL:
HUMABOL’s use of minors in rally violates trust, UN laws
By Rey Anthony Chiu

For allegedly using children as cover for possible police dispersal operations, a radical farmer group could be in a bad light.

The Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) headed by Gov. Edgar Chatto slams the Hugpong sa mga Mag-uumang Bol-anon (HUMABOL) for using children as blankets against police dispersals.

In fact, provincial social welfare and development officer Carmelita Tecson said [Humabol] could be facing possible violation of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UN-CRC).

The PPOC did not take lightly the military reports on the HUMABOL rally to commemorate the 7th death anniversary of slain peasant leader Victor Olayvar Sept. 9.

City Mayor John Geesnell “Baba” Yap said police operatives in charge in keeping order during the mass action reported that the farmers used the children to discourage forceful dispersal.

With the HUMABOL already tagged as a leftist legal front, Bohol Local Monitoring Board coordinator Romeo Teruel hinted that the use of children as violation of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and the International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) and a complaint to the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) is in order.

CARHRIHL is one of the substantive agreements which the country’s state agents and the rebel armed groups follow, even as they settle polarizing political beliefs. 

According to Prof. Carlos P. Medina, Jr. JMC co-chair for the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP), JMC brings together the GRP and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines in a joint collaborative effort to ensure the compliance of the signatories, the parties to the CARHRIHL.”

The rally organized by HUMABOL, drew a starting crowd of less than two hundred at the Plaza Rizal and eventually grew, but observers also noticed the presence of children carrying placards.

“It was a Monday and children ought to be in school,” points out Tecson, who raised the alarm, further saying that involving innocent children in political activities jeopardize their development.

While staging rallies to express protest and grievances against government is a constitutional right, even for children, using them especially when it interferes with their education, mental, moral and social development is against the international convention.

Article 15 of the UNCRC states that the state recognizes the rights of the child to freedom of association and to freedom of peaceful assembly, but there are also safeguards imposed in conformity with the law needed in a democratic society in the interests of national security and public safety and public order.
Yap confirmed that Humabol sought a permit to gather and the group allegedly assured the mayor that its issues would be based on the call for justice for Olaivar.

Sadly, however, the rally also took up other miscellaneous issues like the controversial Priority Development Assistance Funds, the Provincial Government’s Purok Power Movement and other politically incendiary issues.

The city mayor wanted to know if the permits could carry conditions, so as to make it a basis for blacklisting groups seeking permits to gather in the future.

Yap also shared that HUMABOL has clearly violated the trust of the city mayor when they picked other issues in the rally despite assurances that it was only to commemorate the farmer leader who was ambushed in Danao town on Sept. 8, 2006.

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