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... ...Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948 -- "A Cause for Celebration" ... 'Demands of Dignity' 'Demands of Dignity' <DEVELOPING THE DISCOURSE ON OUR DECEMBER 1Oth DECLARATION>
On-Line Edition of the Book by Ed Aurelio C. Reyes Appendix 3-- A: Text of the 1998 Philippine Declaration |
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CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK: Response
to the Spanish Response Response to the American Non-Response Demands of Dignity
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Chapter Three ------------------------
Appendix 3-A 1998 Philippine Declaration of Felicitation and Protest ‘PAHAYAG
NG MGA PILIPINO: BATI AT TULIGSA’ (A PHILIPPINE DECLARATION OF
FELICITATIONAND PROTEST) (English
Translation of Original in Filipino) December 10, 1998 WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, along with all who are with us, salute and greet the entire Humankind, all the nations of the world, through the United Nations and other international organizations and institutions on the occasion of the Golden Anniversary of a most historic moment when the whole of Humankind, through the United Nations General Assembly, spoke as one to acknowledge the innate, basic, universal, indivisible and inalienable rights which form part of our essence as human persons on this planet. And we declare our solidarity with all nations in the effort to uphold and promote human rights in the consciousness and actual lives of all, and, to the maximum extent achievable, prevent, or else condemn and mete justice on, violations of human rights committed by anyone upon anyone in the past, in the present, and in the future. Filipinos have two distinct bases for holding December 10, 1998 as commemorative of historical events of great significance: — Especially because we were among the nations that promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we hail the 50th anniversary of this international covenant. — No less important is the fact that December 10, 1998 is also the centenary of the broadest-ever human rights violation in the Philippines, the sale by Spain to the United States, of the Philippines, the land and the people, for $20 million, through the Treaty of Paris signed in the capital city of France on December 10, 1898. That was an illegal, illegitimate and treacherous transaction, a crime committed against the human rights, including the right to self-determination, of Filipinos. As an editorial of the Filipino newspaper La Independen- cia, issue of November 30, 1898, eloquently put it: “People are not to be bought and sold like horses and houses. If the aim has been to abolish the traffic in Negroes because it meant the sale of persons, why is there still maintained (in international law) the sale of countries with inhabitants (who should be) free to be unwilling to form part of another nation?” The seller ruled our islands for 333 years, from 1565 to 1898, but it no longer had any control or possession of the islands she sold on December 10, 1898, almost four months after any significant hold she had on the archipelago had ended on August 13, 1898. The buyer was a nation established on the unequivocal proposition that “all men are created equal,” after rising against colonialism, and abolishing the slave trade for such would mean the sale of persons to other persons. The United States undertook the purchase as an act of treachery against Filipinos whom she had promised disinterested assistance in our struggle for national liberation. And to assert this purchase and ram it through the Republic we established 44 days later, US forces attacked the officials, soldiers and citizens of the said Republic, the first in Asia, and flooded the land with blood in a decade-long war that left 600,000 Filipino men, women, children and elders dead. This chapter in our history that has all but completely erased from the memory and consciousness of the victims’ and survivors’ descendants, through the educational system and instruments of entertainment she afterwards established. Despite having accorded the Philippines formal political independence in 1946, US domination was maintained in all fields of our lives as a nation and as individual people. On the basis of all the foregoing and in performance of our historic duty to our ancestors, to our descendants, as well as to our fellow-nations who all have had their respective ways of upholding the universal human rights, we hereby emphatically seek the following: 1. That persons who are involved in preparations for the establishment of the International Criminal Court being organized by the United Nations would seriously study the possibility of researching, analyzing, and in some appropriate cases, acting upon, war crimes perpetrated by entire states, to hold these states or their successors responsible, and broaden the study to cover periods prior to the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the establishment of the said Court. 2. That apologies be expressed to the government and people of the Philippines by the United States and Spain: a. The United States, on account of her: (i) deception of the Filipino revolutionaries by pretending to be their ally in their struggle for liberation; (ii) deception of the Filipinos and collusion with Spain to have the latter surrender to the US and not to the Filipino forces that had actually defeated Spain in the two-year uninterrupted armed struggle across the length and breadth of the archipelago; (iii) purshase of the land, population and natural resources of the Philippines from Spain through the instrument that was the Treaty of Paris signed on December 10,1898, which violated the human rights of all Filipinos, including the right to be free, to be equal to all other peoples of the world, as well as the right to self determination and patrimony, and violated the very principles upon which the United States herself was established; (iv) waging of a bloody and brutal war of aggression and occupation, perpetrating killings, torture and other forms of physical abuse, arson and other forms of wanton destruction, and plunder as in the case of the Bells of Balangiga; (v) decades of occupation, and in furtherance of this act, suppressing the right of the Filipinos to enjoy freedom of expression as in displaying the Philippine flag, staging pro-Filipino plays, and publishing pro-Filipino editorials and other works; (vi) slandering and insulting the Filipinos before the eyes of the American people and of the other peoples of the world; (vii) undertaking to control the Filipinos through the latter’s consciousness, which destroyed the native culture, by systematic education that distorted Philippine history and degraded the Filipino language and by various forms of entertainment that lowered the Filipinos’ self-image and created a culture of blind veneration of American culture; (viii) continued domination of the Philippine economy, culture and military through numerous one-sided agreements; (ix) repeated meddling in Philippine politics in Philippine national sovereignty; and (x) continued exploitation of the Philippine natural and human resources, including Filipino ingenuity and indigenous knowledge systems; and b. Spain, on account of her: (i) refusal to acknowledge the Filipino revolutionaries as the forces that actually defeated Spanish rule throughout the archipelago, and on the basis of this refusal and her surrender instead to the United States forces after a face-saving mock battle at Manila; and (ii) her illegal, immoral and illegitimate sale of the Philippines to the United States almost four months after losing the last traces of significant possession of the Philippines. 3. That there be a full disclosure of all information pertaining to the negotiation and ratification of the Treaty of Paris and the conduct of the Filipino-American War, through active research and the removal of any obstacle to the acquisition of data and their full dissemination through all effective channels, including the Internet. Such information should include official records of the US Congress containing debates on the Treaty of Paris and testimonies of witnesses about the savage war waged by the US invasion and occupation forces. 4. That the historic Bells of Balangiga, which were plundered by US soldiers while perpetrating genocide and widescale arson in the whole island of Samar, be returned to the Philippines. 5. That the American, Filipino and Spanish peoples, as well as the other peoples of the world, learn well the lessons from these historical events on the basis of all the information to be unearthed and disseminated, and henceforth relate to one another more firmly on the basis of equality, mutual respect and the promotion of peace and justice. 6. That since the governments involved, and the international organizations that depend on the agreement of governments, cannot be expected to actively support these calls or even just accord these any attention, the people, as citizens of various states, who support the spirit and content of this Declaration initiate actions, close ranks, synergize efforts and coordinate closely in order to have this Declaration disseminated and explained to the widest achievable extent. We are signing this declaration on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 100th anniversary of the illegal, illegitimate and immoral Treaty of Paris, so that on the commemoration date itself, December 10, 1998, this Declaration shall have started being received by the addressees and possible supporters. Signatures will continue to be added even as the Declaration spreads along with all the information pertinent to its contents. SIGNED
in various parts of the Philippines from November 30 up to December 6,
1998. (Most of the 300 so
initiating signatories were historians and history professors, along with
dozens of human rights advocates, journalists and students.) back to top of this page. back to main chapter text.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS: Demands of Dignity THE HARDCOPY EDITION, in about 180 regular sized bookpaper pages with full-color paperback cover FREE ACCESS FOR ALL to the ON-LINE EDITION until February. 4, 2009, 110th Anni- versary of the Fil-Am War.
APPENDICES: Appendix 3-A: Text of 1998 Philippine Declaration Appendix 3-C: Unreal Estate: Map of Fraudulent Sale
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